We are absolutely thrilled to have such a talented, creative, and passionate group of students in this course. While we anticipate respectful dialogue and constructive comments in our discussion boards, on Facebook, and on Twitter, we wanted to lay out some guidelines to help ensure this is a positive learning experience for all students. These guidelines apply to all discussions in and about the course, whether that is on edX, Facebook, or Twitter:
- Positive and constructive debate is welcomed and encouraged! One thing that is not encouraged, and will not be tolerated, is abusive or disrespectful communication with your peers. The Discussions are a place for you to interact with the global edX community, so let's also all ensure we make it a supportive place to learn together.
- Sharing: you are absolutely welcome to share your portfolios, your blogs, your websites, and your writing. Please do not promote or post commercial activities in our course communities. (If you are a comic book store hosting a course meetup, you are of course encouraged to share your location and promote the meetup!)
- Feedback: This is one of our first MOOCs, and we are learning all the time about how to make it the best experience it can be for the students. We welcome your ideas and feedback. If you would like to send us thoughts directly, please e-mail us: smithsonianxcourses@gmail.com. If you have non-course related criticism about the Smithsonian or any members of our course team or fellow students, you are welcome to have that dialogue outside of the course, but please do not share it here. Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
- Comic Book Expertise: We have done our absolute best to be accurate, true to the history of the comic book, and present material that celebrates the wide range of the incredibly talented people that have contributed to the deep universe of superheroes. We recognize that we will not be comprehensive, and we did not take on that challenge. But the advantage of having this amazing global community is that we can benefit from your help in pointing out things we missed, telling us what we got wrong, or providing ideas for the next iteration of this course. We will be great listeners. E-mail us: smithsonianxcourses@gmail.com
Hopefully these guidelines are straightforward. If we see a violation, a member of the SmithsonianX team will give you a warning. A second violation will be taken more seriously, and will impact your ability to participate in the course and/or in our groups. But we trust that this will not be necessary!
Thank you,
Your SmithsonianX Team