Postings (20%)

Five times during the term you will be asked to post a response to a prompt on Canvas. See the Canvas Calendar and Modules for the specific dates. Your response will be visible to other members of the group who have already posted. In addition to your own response, you will be asked to comment on at least one classmate’s posting. You are free to comment on more than one post, and to respond to others’ comments on your own posting.

Your original response should generally be at least 250 words in length, and is worth up to 10 points. Your comments on classmates’ postings should be a minimum of 100 words, and are worth up to 5 points. In evaluating your contributions, I will consider the following criteria:

Responses and comments should be thorough and thoughtful. Just posting an "I agree" or "Good ideas" will not be considered adequate.
At the same time, be concise—keep responses and comments to one or two focused paragraphs. Keep in mind that fellow learners will be reading and responding to you, too.
Support your statements with references and concrete examples from our readings.
Summarize and restate ideas in your own words. Make direct quotations from a reading only when the exact wording is relevant to a point you are making. If you do quote directly, put the quoted material within quotation marks and give the page number in parentheses. If you’re citing an assigned reading there’s no need to give a full citation. For example:

Idema and Haft say that “the distinction between trivial and high literature largely coincides with that between baihua and wenyan literature” (58)—but note that they don’t claim that the two pairs of categories are identical.

Responses and comments should address the questions presented for discussion. You may extend the topic by including prior knowledge, personal experiences, web sites, resources, etc. (giving credit when appropriate), but don't stray into completely different matters.
In your comments to others’ responses, you are welcome to disagree, raise questions, or point out errors of fact, but remember to be respectful and constructive.

Write in an appropriate register of academic prose. Avoid overuse of internet jargon or abbreviations. I will not dock points for errors of grammar as such, but I will dock points for language that does not communicate your ideas clearly. I'll also dock points for imprecise use of terms and concepts introduced in the readings or in class.

Your single lowest Posting score will be dropped when your course grade is calculated.