Discussion Forum Guidelines
WELCOME TO THE COMMUNITY!
The discussion forums are a way for you to share your thoughts about course material, learn from your fellow students, get to know them better, and report problems. It is meant to be mostly student-led with limited oversight by course staff.
You can also email questions or problems to cooperapmooc@gmail.com and a member of the course team will make every effort to assist you within ten days.
In addition to posting, there are a few other ways you can participate:
- Select the green "+" sign icon to up-vote posts and good responses (so the post will move closer to the top of the discussion thread);
- Click the "Report" button (with the flag icon) to report forum misuse;
- Select the blue star icon to follow posts for updates.
You are part of a diverse learning community that forms the heart of a meaningful learning experience. Be it online or in person, a healthy online learning community starts with some basics:
- Be respectful. Please respect your fellow students. Debate and pushing on ideas is part of a healthy and thriving learning community, but only when that is done in a polite and respectful manner. Insulting, condescending or abusive words will not be tolerated and will be reported and removed.
- Be constructive. A learning community is about learning with and through engagement with one another. When commenting on others' projects, try to offer constructive feedback and suggestions that help them improve it.
- Be sensitive. This is a global forum with participants from many different cultures and backgrounds. Be sensitive when discussing race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or controversial topics since others may be more sensitive about them than you are.
- Post appropriately. Content that violates the Terms of Service is not permitted. You may not post inappropriate (e.g. pornographic) or copyrighted content, advertise or promote outside products or organizations, or spam the forums with repeated content.
Users that repeatedly post inappropriate content (see above) may lose their posting privileges, at the discretion of the course staff.
Please help us create a healthy learning environment by respecting these standards. We do not expect to see many of these issues because we trust students like you to keep our forum communities strong and healthy.
In addition, please consider the following guidelines when posting in the course forums. These guidelines were created to serve the community and make the forums welcoming and easy to use. If you have other suggestions to add, please let us know!
FORUM POSTING GUIDELINES
What makes a good post? The main goal of the forums is to provide a place where dialogue can build as the collective learning community digs into this content together. The forums are there for all learners to have a deeper, more meaningful learning experience, but there are a few thing to consider when posting in the course forums:
- Read before posting. Your comment or question should build on what’s already been discussed. If you have a question, scan through to see if it’s already been addressed and use the search function to avoid creating duplicate threads and find the most appropriate topic thread to post in.
- Use informative titles. Keep your post titles short and on-topic so the forums are easier to navigate. If you’re asking a question, it should go in the title.
- Make it easy to read. Present facts and background in your post. Don’t capitalize or bold entire sentences since this makes the forums harder to read. Check your posts for spelling or grammatical errors.
- Stay on topic. Don’t change the topic of a thread or split a thread into multiple discussions. If you are discussing something that is not directly related to the course materials, pick one thread instead of discussing over multiple threads. And please, don’t post the same post/question in more than one forum.
- Help keep the site friendly. If you think a project or comment is mean, insulting, too violent, or otherwise inappropriate, click “Report” to let us know about it.
Thanks for keeping the conversation lively and respectful!