just plurk instead. You know it's more fun!!

what sort of discussion is leading AnnaElliott to develop this phobia?

It's a WebCT discussion board for my MSc - 1227 messages in 8 days

ouch! That's a lot.

one strategy I can suggest is breaking your reading up into more chunks. That is, spend 15 minutes so every two days & one larger chunk.

that might make it more manageable.

I try and do a spell on it in the morning and then again later in the day -but all I need is one day (or shock horror two days!) where...

I'm not around and it's a terrible catch-up game! I'm trying to pull out a handful of threads and focus on those

Methinks the volume might just be linked to the fact that they've decided to assess the discussion board on this module!

that always helps! My friend Howard is running an assessed forum exercise in his course.

students are required to make two substantive postings per week. He's noticing, in his class of 20, that there's a goodly number doing it

the day before the week period ends. That, of course, doesn't then result in "discussions".

he's just given out the advice that I gave you: for people to check in more often.

his marking rubric for it is interesting too.

Our assessment is based on that outlined by Ravoi (2000) and the requirement rather than a prescribed number of postings...

is that students should log and contribute several times a week - hence 30 students managing 1200+ posts!

the Howard allocates points based on the quality of the contribution. 0 for none. 1 for a "me too" and a maximum of 4 for something ...

that ties together viewpoints of other students as well as the course readings to present something.

I suspect that's possibly a better path to take, as it encourages more thoughtful posts.

one of my London School of Economics acquaintances, researching blogs/wikis, commented that "me too" posts ought to be worth -1.

Interesting... I've come across a similar rubric and wondered whether it worked? Agree about the -1 posts!

however, as I was recently discussing with Mr. IBM, after our Plurk debate about "selfish" lurkers (BTW: changed my mind somewhat), "me too"

In fairness the standard of contribution on this board is very high - but that actually makes wading through it harder!!

messages do serve a useful purpose in some situations in that they provide some kind of feedback that the poster is being heard.

as rob's article (tinyurl.com/4apq35) comments, women often want that recognition, that their contribution is making a difference.

it's an oft-occurring theme in an established discussion forum I belong to that women often feel "unheard" because they post &

My feeling is that "me too" is ok if there are also other more substantial contributions also being made by the poster

it's seemingly "ignored".

I think I'd agree vis a vis the female issue - generally on our d/bs they seem to need alot more bolstering

suggests that you don't have to read everything. Pick out threads that seem most interesting to you & concentrate on those this week.

Someone contacted me the other day worring that the tutors hadn't commented on her post and did I think that meant she was 'wrong'?

or way off-beam in her comments?

(Rob's article link, by the way, comes from Plurk discussion www.plurk.com/p/4t382 this morning about running projects in a ...

"female-friendly" way)

can see where the student's coming from. <musing> It's not practical for tutors or moderators to respond positively to every post & it

would probably seem insincere if we did. <musing>

I think it's a tricky balance between creating a sense of tutor 'presence' but also allowing threads to run that don't 'need' tutor comment

Indeed. In such a situation, though, it's easy to overlook the people who possibly need reassurance.

(the previous Plurkussion about lurkers, forums, etc. is at www.plurk.com/p/49aql)

Thanks for the urls - I'll have a look at those. Do you find much difference between undergrads / postgrads?

hmmm. I think it's too early for me to tell. This is my first course with postgrads.

I'm working with a Uni who have the opposite problem at the moment - 37 posts over a 10 week term from a corhort of 130!

that's more the scenario with which I'm familiar, although not on that sort of ratio scale!

I'm trying to write a paper about participation on that particular course at the moment - but it keeps sliding on the 'to do' list!

just generated some quick & dirty participation stats for the course I had the debriefing on Saturday.

total postings since May 1st: 208.

postings by me: 113 (incl. 5 "What Is This Conference" info messages)

postings by students: 95

Unique posters (incl. me): 13

Unique posters still registered: 8 (excludes me)

how many in the cohort?

21, but one was replaced in the first week of the course with someone else, so I started with 20.

wow....was that a blended or entirely distance learning course?

I still have 12.

I'm not sure how many are registered still across the entire course, but I can tell you that only 68% of students who started the course

submitted the last TMA.

AnnaElliott remember the "mark as read" option, if the forum has one.

Out of interest - what sort of course was it that those stats came from?

third year technology course.

misetak: fortunately WebCT allows us filter so that we only view new messages!

as in online technology??

it's about e-business foundations and practices using web services.

well that's certainly given me alot of food for thought about participation today!!

it was a good Plurkussion, I thought. I've been really pleased at some of the things I've been doing here in Plurk.

the concept of Plurkussion!

yes, misetak liked that word too. She Plurked about it. Are you following any of the other people yet?

sort of... in the same haphazard way that I'm following the d/b!!