Discussion Posts
Guidelines: Read the two documents giving expressing divergent views. Research the issue and form your opinion on the issue. The first part of this assignment is posting your response to both of the corresponding readings associated with the Discussion topic. Your response should be structured like an essay, (use paragraphs) and make references to the reading. Reference to additional readings that you use for your analysis should be properly cited. At the end of your essay, please provide a question for further discussion, that your classmates may respond to in the second part of this assignment. See below an outline for writing the post.
You will not be able to see what your peers have posted prior to submitting your initial post (essay). This is to ensure originality and no copy-paste/filibustering mentality. Should your first post be an empty post (to circumvent this initial blocking view of others’ posts), it will count as zero (0) points. Keep in mind that your discussion postings will likely be seen by other members of the course. Care should be taken when determining what to post.
After you post your own, original comment on both the readings (reading others’ discussion posts is disabled until you post your own), you need to reply to, at least, two (2) discussion posts of your peers. Opinions and examples are valuable to your posts but you need to show that you have read the assigned readings.
The discussion post is graded with a rubric. Be sure to check out the rubric to maximize your grade.
Response/Reply post: should be substantive and analytical and not banal (“your post is very interesting, I agree with what you have said).”
Word limit: the initial post for each discussion must have a minimum of 400-500 words (not a hard limit).
Relevance to assigned material: the posted ideas indicate that the student has read the assigned material.
Clarity and coherence.
Critical thinking: there is evidence that the student has adequately analyzed, synthesized, and evaluated the assigned material.
The posting articulates a question for discussion that pertains to the assigned material.
Spelling, grammar: the posting must meet university-level standards of spelling and grammar.
A note about discussions:
These discussions are an excellent way to enhance one’s knowledge and develop skills for civil, social interaction. Living in the turbulent times when the term “fake news” has become passé. It is important to understand the difference between fact, opinion and belief, prejudice and develop skills to analyze them.
As Sen. Daniel Moynihan once said “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.
A fact is verifiable. This may involve numbers, dates, testimony, photograph, video evidence, etc. (e.g.: “World War II ended in 1945.”)
An opinion is a judgment based on facts, an honest attempt to draw a reasonable conclusion from factual evidence. An opinion is potentially changeable–depending on how the evidence is interpreted. For example, we know that millions of people go without proper medical care, and so you form the opinion that the country should institute national health insurance for the benefit of all.
A belief is a conviction based on cultural, personal faith, morality, or values. Statements such as “Capital punishment is legalized murder” are often called “opinions” because they express viewpoints, but they are not based on facts or other evidence.
Prejudice is a half-baked opinion based on insufficient or unexamined evidence. For example “Women are bad drivers,” “Men don’t ask for driving directions,” unlike a belief, a prejudice is testable: it can be contested and disproved on the basis of facts.
Outline for the discussion post.
- State the issue in your own words
- Identify the author and major thesis of the Yes side
- Identify the author and major thesis of the No side.
- Briefly state in your own words two facts presented by each side.
- Briefly identify as many fallacies on the Yes side as you can.
- Briefly identify as many fallacies on the No side as you can.
- All in all, which author impressed you as being the most empirical in presenting their thesis? Why?
- Are there any reasons to believe the writer/s are biased? If so, why do they have these biases?
- Which side (Yes or No) do you personally feel is most correct now that you have reviewed the material in these articles? Why?
- Did you find evidence of other logical errors on the part of the authors? Explain which of the following apply and where.
- Distortion of Information
- Faulty Analogy
- Oversimplification
- Stereotyping
- Faulty Generalization
