0.2D - Discussion and Best Practices

The discussion forum is the main way for you to communicate with the course team and other students. We hope it contributes to a sense of community and serves as a useful resource for your learning.

Discussion forms an integral part of the 4.605x course. The primary purpose of discussion in this course is to engage students in a meaningful manner to focus and reinforce key topics and ideas from Mark Jarzombek’s recorded lecture material (discourse). A secondary purpose of discussion is to address technical questions about either course material or the online courseware environment (troubleshooting). These primary and secondary items are addressed through two distinct types of discussion, outlined below.

Discourse - Discursive discussion prompts and are issued on a rolling basis with lecture material. This prompt will be issued in a “discussion” component, filed in a sub-unit, within each lecture, placed after the lecture material. The prompt will address the topic of respective lectures, through one of the following frameworks:

These prompts will be released with each lecture, weekly.

Troubleshooting  - Troubleshooting discussion will be initiated by students, and will be created by them to address questions they have about using the edX site and its associated materials. Specific questions about course content will be addressed here as well. Teaching Assistants will be responsible for addressing these questions on a regular basis. Student questions will be issued in the Discussion tab, under the topic “Troubleshooting.”

 

GUidelines 

When engaging in discussion for this course, please follow the following guidelines: