This document introduces a history teacher, Mrs. Booth, to her students. She provides some personal details such as being from Connecticut but now living in Florida where she enjoys the warm weather and her cats. She has been married for 25 years and has two children. She also lists some routine tasks like checking email daily and grading assignments. She includes some critical thinking prompts for students and discusses some potential management issues that may arise with online discussions and strategies for addressing them.

1. Introduce Myself
Hi and welcome to your history class. I’m Mrs. Booth and I am your instructor for this course. I’m so
pleased that you’ve chosen to be a part of our team and I look forward to working with you as we travel
through history. While history is quite a passion of mine, and I hope it will be one of yours too, it is not my
only obsession. I am an avid reader of historical fiction (o.k. still history), I live in central Florida although I
was born and raised in Connecticut. I could not live happily without regular sun and warm weather or my
cats. Most of all, I couldn’t be happy without my wonderful family. I have been married almost 25 years
now. We have two beautiful children (they really are), a boy 19 and girl 17. My favorite movie is The
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. I would love to know something about you. Please share a bit in the
“Introduce Myself” discussion forum. I really do look forward to meeting you there.
Routine Tasks
Item
Number
Daily Weekly Monthly
1 Check v&email 2-3x daily & return
messages within 24 hours
Monitor student
activity & progress
Mail merge progress
reports
2 Maintain discussion area posts Send motivational
emails/phone calls as
needed.
3 grading – chunk/portion Update course page
4 Meet with colleagues
Critical Thinking Prompts
 What do you consider to be your most memorable accomplishments and what do you still
hope to accomplish?
 Think of something that fascinates you. What interview questions would you ask?
 If your life were a book, what would be the title? What would the book reviews say?
 What place, real or fiction, is most like you and why?
Management Issues
Issue Strategy
Confusion about how, where, and when to post  Clear and specific guidelines, directions
and posted deadlines
Off topic  Redirect to/encourage casual forum
area

2. Lack of depth in posts and responses  Clear requirement guidelines established
in the beginning.
 Discussion Grading rubric
Excessively long posts  Clear requirement guidelines established
in the beginning – discussion rubric
 private contact with student with gentle
reminder of post guidelines
Low/No participation  Personalized feedback early on
 Positive feedback
 Private discussion to discuss strategies
that work for the individual and instructor
 Assigning specific roles
Technical Difficulties  Tech Support link with common problems
and solutions and video directions & help
number
 New student orientation that covers basic
course navigation, uploading, etc.
Breech of Netiquette  Clear netiquette rules reviewed at
beginning of course
 Reminder of Netiquette rules with each
discussion
 Private reminder for first violation
 Take privileges away for 2nd
violation
 Withdraw student from
discussions/Withdraw Fail discussion
portion of course for 3rd
violation or at
instructor’s discretion
Procrastination/late posts  Include reminder email to all participants
before due date
 Personalized communication with student
 No grade for late posts
Management Strategies
Prepare strong discussion questions Questions to promoting higher order thinking – open
ended questions that solicit a variety of responses
Small discussion groups Break class up into smaller groups to discuss topic.
Groups come together in the end to share.
Collaboration – each member is assigned a role to
create a finished product – groups share out in the
end.
Monitor discussion and intervene only as needed Facilitator should monitor discussion daily. If
discussion wanes, either summarize and end the
discussion or prompt with further questioning.
Feed back Provide personalized feedback early on. Maintain a
presence, more frequently early on, less toward the
end. Summarize or assign a summarizer to end the
discussion.
Establish Clear Expectations Expectations and guidelines should be clear from the
beginning. Students should be made aware of the
expectations before the start of the discussion board
and expectations and guidelines are made available

3. in an ongoing basis.
Online Discussion Forum Rubric
Category 1 2 3 4
Promptness and
Initiative
Does not post or
posts on occasion
with prompting
Does not respond
to prompting
Posts after the
deadline or with
prompting
Posts in a timely
manner with
occasional
prompting
Consistently posts
within 48 hours of
assigned topic
Does not require
prompting
Delivery of Post Posts reflect haste
– may have poor
spelling and
grammar
Most posts reflect
several spelling
and grammar
errors
Posts have few
spelling and
grammatical
errors
Posts are free of
spelling and
grammatical errors.
Relevance of Post Posts are off
topic, irrelevant or
lacks quality
Posts are brief and
reflect little to no
insight into topic
Posts are
frequent and
reflect insight
into topic or
related posts.
Posts encourage
further
discussion of
topic
Posts consistently
and reflects high
level of
understanding and
insight into topic
Often cites
additional sources
related to topic.
Posts encourage
further discussion of
topic
Meeting Discussion
Guidelines/Netiquette
Posts consistently
breech netiquette
rules and/or
discussion forum
guidelines
Posts occasionally
breech netiquette
rules and/or
discussion forum
guidelines
Post almost
conform to
netiquette rules
and forum
guidelines.
Posts always
conform to
netiquette rules and
forum guidelines.
Who Are You?
This area is for sharing who you are with your classmates in a fun and creative way. Choose one of the free
tools or one of your own to create a reflection of you and post to this discussion forum.
Glogster – make a poster of yourself
http://www.glogster.com/

4. Wordle – personalized word clouds
http://www.wordle.net/
Portrait Illustration Maker
http://illustmaker.abi-station.com/index_en.shtml
Create your own avatar
http://avatarmaker.eu/