Skipping the online discussions for EC classes

[ajlala1221]

Am I the only person who has considered doing this? I'm retaining less information trying to keep up with these discussions than I would be if I just ignored them altogether. I'm more interested in passing the class and retaining what I'm self teaching myself instead of trying to keep up with APA formats, citing references, maintaining a perfect GPA, and basically making myself visible. Has anyone else had this issue or am I that antisocial? I'm not trying to be rude or difficult :-(

[Leebo]

In my experience, they don't demand much effort, though my only experiences are the success seminar and astronomy.

But if you don't care what grade you get and it's not going to impact your attendance, then I guess it's your prerogative.

[UptonSinclair]

I blew off two of the discussion topics in my Calculus course without too many problems.

[Exfactor]

I concur with the poster above, most don't demand much effort; however, I have noticed some of the courses I'm now taking are requiring more discussion topics during a week than previously. I also know in some of the courses I'm taking part in discussions is what marks you as being present/absent in the course. So not posting can cause blackboard to make you absent. Nevertheless, I think taking part in discussions are somewhat essential to online classes. I have found that they can really be beneficial to your final grade.

[GoodYellowDogs]

It was a requirement of one of my classes - and a pretty hefty portion of the grade. It didn't take much effort. I got a B+ instead of an A because I didn't do it for two weeks.

[dmjacobsen]

The worst are DB's on hard sciences. Just how much of an opinion can I have about a hard science? My typical response is something like, "Thank you for that succinct explanation of XYZ topic, although I did not bother to actually read your post. Here's an article that I only read the abstract on, which you surely will not bother reading. This article gives information that is of trivial value and is peripherally related to XYZ topic, but hey -- it's a scholarly reference (APA Citation, 2014)".

Discussion boards are the bane of my existence. While I can't speak to EC specifically, I will say that if it impacts your grade at all, just do them. It's not really all that difficult -- it's just tedious. However, Google Scholar is your best friend. Just get on there, search for a topic related to your discussion board, read the abstract, pick a quote that looks relevant, and click "cite" on Google Scholar. Boom, you've got your APA-style citation ready at the click of a button, and you have an articulate response with a scholarly citation. My DB responses typically take me about 3 minutes each.

[Leebo]

Excelsior does provide students with access to library resources that should handle the research portion of it.

A lot of students seem to respond with "Great post! You really understood the information!" or something trivial like that. What I do is try to find someone whose explanation of a topic was lacking and make a clarification or correction. It's not difficult to find if you have enough students in your class.

[Bibby]

Even some of my in-person classes require you to participate on Blackboard discussions, but I've rarely found them to be difficult. Most of my professors only require you to write a paragraph or two, and respond to two other posts. That's not asking a lot. (That said, most of my professors don't require you to cite anything or use APA style.)

[mbbnyc]

Am I the only person who has considered doing this? I'm retaining less information trying to keep up with these discussions than I would be if I just ignored them altogether. I'm more interested in passing the class and retaining what I'm self teaching myself instead of trying to keep up with APA formats, citing references, maintaining a perfect GPA, and basically making myself visible. Has anyone else had this issue or am I that antisocial? I'm not trying to be rude or difficult :-(

The typical 8 week EC class requires 2 discussions per week, 1 assignment and 1 quiz, as well as a midterm and a final exam. I have taken a lot of these. I haven't taken any 15 week classes so I can't speak to those.

The discussions are a huge part of your grade. You are required to post one response per discussion topic of around 250 words and post a reply to at least two classmates of around 75 words. I honestly don't see how you could pass the classes without at least posting the initial response to the two discussions. If you are referring to blowing off the responses to two classmates (I really hate these!), then you can do that and pass the course, but it knocks the max grade you can obtain per discussion down to around 75 - 80. The instructors typically frown on this practice, so if you make a habit of it then you may hurt your grade in other areas. It really doesn't require that much effort.

You need to use APA citations for many of the assignments of any essay questions on midterms of finals, so blowing off the discussions is not going to allow you to avoid that. Good luck.

[Tedium]

Am I the only person who has considered doing this? I'm retaining less information trying to keep up with these discussions than I would be if I just ignored them altogether. I'm more interested in passing the class and retaining what I'm self teaching myself instead of trying to keep up with APA formats, citing references, maintaining a perfect GPA, and basically making myself visible. Has anyone else had this issue or am I that antisocial? I'm not trying to be rude or difficult :-(

I'm also not trying to be rude, but you may have more of a problem than you think if responding to a discussion board is preventing you from retaining learned material. What I find to be a drag is when classmates do not want to start a discussion and everything is "Great post!" That does not inspire me to want to respond to anyone. I think that is the weakest link in distance education, really.

Aside from that, it's just one of those necessary evils. We all do it so that we can get a good grade and get the hell out. Part of passing the class, like you say you want to do, is jumping through certain hoops. This is just one of them. If you were required to write "mini-essays" every week then I could see how that would be problematic, but its just a discussion board post. It's really not all that different from posting to this or any other message board. That's how I have always looked at it anyway.