Making online forum posts necessary - is this a good idea?

kk727

One of my teachers, for AP Physics, has made it mandatory for my entire class to register on this particular forum and post three times per week. Although this is not a hugely time consuming assignment, me and many of my classmates have found it difficult to find threads to post on or places to contribute; after all, we're only at the high school-level, and many other posters here have multiple degrees...basically, most of the stuff on here is way over our heads. I guess it's good to immerse us in physics, but at the same time, some of us have already been banned/warned - not to mention we're flooding the forums.

I've talked to my teacher about this, and he's not changing the assignment. I just wanted to get a general opinion about this - is it a good idea? a bad idea?

Sorry if this is posted in the wrong place! I just want to hear what people think. Thanks!

Borek

It is not a bad idea, although obviously it has its drawbacks.

There is plenty of occasions to start an interesting and low level thread. On many occasions we were discussing physics of Mythbusters experiments, movies and so on. As long as you are willing to learn and ready to listen and inquire when something is not clear, you are welcome - we have no problems discussing the most basic things if it may help someone understand physics better.

Andy Resnick

I tend to think this is a good idea, even though 'forced participation' is usually something I oppose. Here's an analogy- one of our required classes in grad school was 'Physics Seminar'- a 1- credit course which was simply the regular Department seminar. There was attendance taken. For a couple of years, we were each required to ask 2 questions each semester.

As you can imagine, the students did not like this- being forced to ask the speaker a question about an unfamiliar topic, not to mention the risk of asking a stupid question in front of the entire department.

Some people opted for generic "can you explain that slide?"- that didn't last too long.

I admit to not liking the policy either, but after I adjusted to the reality I understood the value.

So, let me ask you this- why do you think your teacher wants you to actively participate in this forum? How will active participation in this forum benefit you? What is the goal of actively participating in this forum?

Astronuc

This probably belongs in the Feedback forum.

For students who have been banned, the teacher would have to contact us privately, or Greg Bernhardt (via PM or email), in order to have them reinstated.

I strongly recommending printing out a copy of the PF guidelines. People are banned when they violate the guidelines (e.g., for being rude or offensive, for posting nonsense or inappropriate material, . . . .) . If one adheres to the guidelines, one will not be banned.

jtbell

Once upon a time, I was a moderator of the Usenet newsgroup news.newusers.questions. For several years, we used to regularly get bursts of posts from students in Internet-literacy classes who had been assigned to post something in a newsgroup. Many of them simply took the example posting to news.newusers.questions that was in their textbook, and reproduced it, word for word! Some weird question about wombats or llamas or something like that. I ended up writing a software filter to detect those posts and bounce them back to the senders.

We probably wouldn't have that particular problem. Nevertheless, the instructor needs to make clear that posts must contribute constructively to the forum, either by answering a question or by posing a question that leads to a useful discussion.

I think requiring three posts a week is too much. Maybe print out and be able to discuss three interesting threads per week, and start or contribute to one or two threads per month or semester.

Vanadium 50

A few comments.

One is that since the assignment is firm, asking the rest of us to publicly undermine the teacher's position seems to me unwise and some would probably find it disrespectful.

The second is that there are many, many messages in the homework help sections. If you are taking AP physics - which is supposed to be college level - I see no reason why you cannot contribute there. Indeed, one never understands a subject quite so well as when one has to explain it to others. Perhaps this is what your teacher had in mind.

Finally, you seem to be concerned with banning. I don't see the difference here between a student being banned for bad behavior and a student being asked to leave a museum (Perhaps also a class assignment) for bad behavior. It's certainly not our fault or the museum's if this happens. The fraction of non-spammers that end up banned here is less than 0.1% - probably much less. I would suggest that this does not set the bar terribly high. In any event, Astronuc is right - follow the guidelines and there won't be problems.

Redbelly98

I think it's a good idea. And one class won't "flood the forums", as stated in the OP. We are talking maybe 100 posts per week from the students. Compare that to the 1500 we had in past 24 hours, it's of order 1% of the forum's posts.

kk727

I definitely think it would benefit me if there was more of a discussion factor; instead of having to "go home and post three posts" as homework, it would be nice if we could find interesting threads and spend, I don't know, maybe a section of each class going over them? We could definitely start some interesting discussions and learn something in the process. I really don't find the assignment unfair, as most of us want to be engineers or something physics-related anyway, so I guess it's like we're getting a head start.

Yep, I'm going to get a list together from my teacher and give it to them, I've already been messaged about it!

I agree that it's too much - I think with 30 of us posting, it may be a little annoying for you guys, since most of us will be posting just to get the assignment done. But I love your other idea! I'll bring that up in class.

.....good point, I didn't think of it like that. Hahah!

Andy Resnick

Excellent idea! *Definitely* encourage the teacher to do this.

kk727

I'll be sure to bring it up in class tomorrow! Maybe my teacher will listen to me now that I have people on my side...haha! Thanks for your input!

symbolipoint

The student's business belongs among the student, his teacher, the other colleague students, and the student's parents, and maybe the school. The student's business does not belong in an open public internet forum unless publishing this way is the students own choice. The assignment to post/publish on these forums is not appropriate.

Moonbear

This seems like an odd assignment, particularly if there were no criteria for quality or length of posts included, and no alternative assignment made available should a student (or parent) not be comfortable with posting on an open internet forum.

It seems to be a violation of student privacy to make it a requirement for them to post their assignments publicly. I know I'm not permitted to post any of my students' assignments publicly. I can make participation in forum discussions a mandatory part of their grade, but that forum needs to be maintained within my secured course website that is only accessible to people in the course.

I also agree with the suggestion that a more useful exercise might be for each student to locate a thread of interest and use that as a jumping off point for class discussion.

Astronuc

I agree - it is a bit odd, but then perhaps it reflects the changing nature of education in the age of the internet where there is much more access to the public domain.

I would think it more appropriate to extract threads of interest and discuss the content without necessarily participating in the discussion. The participation should be voluntary.

kk727

Thankfully none of my classmates had issues with posting online, so that problem did not arise - but I can see in certain circumstances where it would definitely be problematic. I guess the goal here is to just get us involved in some intelligent discussions, which I don't find wrong at all. Either way, this assignment is pretty much here to stay, so I guess we're going to have to just stick with it!