Good discussion questions are ones that require your classmates to think critically about the issue. They should require your classmates to demonstrate both factual knowledge of the content and a comprehension of how the knowledge applies to public health. A good question should not be a "look it up" question or a "what do you think of.." question.

Questions and responses will be graded. The quality of the discussion can be influenced by the feedback given to those who post. Each pair is responsible for creating 2 discussion questions to engage classmates. I will use the following criteria to assess the quality of questions:

Points	Criteria	Description
5	Relevance	the questions must be relevant to the country and material that was provided.
5	Importance	the questions must address a significant and/or controversial issue within the materials provided.
5	Thought-provoking	the questions must require high-level thought, not a simple "look it up" in the materials.
5	Originality	You cannot ask questions that have been previously asked by another student(s).
5	Timely	Questions must be posted early (before noon) on the day your multimedia communication is released.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON STUDENT LED DISCUSSIONS (based on William Pelz, SUNY-Herkimer CC)

Low quality posts do not teach us anything, or contribute anything positive or substantial to the discussion. Low quality responses are usually biased, prejudicial, off topic, unsubstantiated, carelessly typed, poorly thought-out, grammatically incorrect, confusing, disrespectful of another student or person.

High quality responses teach us something, or add something positive and/or substantial to the discussion. It contains information from the materials or other valid source, applies a concept from the materials or a legitimate website in a meaningful way, facilitates understanding of the course material. The best posts not only introduce new ideas or knowledge, but help us relate it to what we are studying in the module.

For each of the discussions, I will evaluate the quality of your responses. Your grade in each of the the discussions will be determined by the total performance in all the discussion forums.

Everyone is responsible for leading and participating in the discussions. For example, in the Student Led Discussions, each pair is required to ask two questions in their forum and then lead the discussion on those questions. The questions you ask should require thoughtful responses, and should address important and/or controversial issues introduced in the materials. No two questions should be the same - so read the other questions before posting your own. Each pair must post their questions to their discussion forum by 12:30PM they day of their forum. Your classmates will have until 10:00PM to respond to your questions. When students respond to your questions, you should respond back to them. Your job is to facilitate the discussion in your discussion thread, so you should probe for additional information and ask additional questions in order to fully explore the topics you have asked about. I would work your schedule out with your partner so you can divide up the monitoring of the forum.

The Student Led Discussions are the major learning activities in this course. I will evaluate your participation carefully. You must demonstrate knowledge of the material - not just your opinions. Each contribution you make to any of the discussion threads should add something of value to the discussion.

I will decide the grade requirements for each discussion separately, based on the overall quality of the questions and responses posted by all of the participants. Your best strategy is to create thought-provoking questions and post as many high quality responses as you can in each discussion. If you are not earning discussion grades that are as high as you would like, you have many opportunities to work harder in future discussion forums. Please note, the number of quality points I award for your discussion questions and responses IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.

Teaching Presence is the facilitation and direction of cognitive and social process for the realization of personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes. There are two major ways students can add teaching presence to a discussion:

BY FACILITATING THE DISCUSSION	BY DIRECT INSTRUCTION
Identifying areas of agreement and disagreement	Presenting content and questions
Seeking to reach consensus/understanding	Focusing the discussion
Encouraging, acknowledging and reinforcing student contributions	Summarizing the discussion Confirming understanding
Setting a climate for learning	Diagnosing misperceptions
Drawing in participants/prompting discussion	Injecting knowledge from diverse sources
Assessing the efficacy of the process	Responding to technical concerns

Points	Teaching Presence Criteria
0	Unrated response. The post adds no teaching presence to the discussion
5	The post contains one instance of teaching presence (from the list above)
10	The post contains two instances of teaching presence (from the list above)
15	The post contains three instances of teaching presence (from the list above)
20	The post contains four or more instances of teaching presence (from the list above)