Most recent public comments by Fr. Clint McDonell https://nowcomment.com/users/80096 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870965 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870965 I could see this as a useful tool for second year Latin when we actually start reading longer texts that are not adapted. I could have students write grammatical footnotes for particular words to help their classmates translate. At the same time, I think it could get really overwhelming with a large theology or philosophy class: comments could expand exponentially. Sun, 10 May 2020 22:22:04 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870958 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870958 Some of the article and some of the comments have made me consider more carefully the time burden of these discussions on the students. As I have been putting together an online syllabus, I have taken the approach of having an online discussion board each week, but only requiring certain students (on a rotating basis) to participate. The discussion board replaces assignments for that week. Sat, 09 May 2020 16:40:27 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870957 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870957 Thank you for this short rubric, Oswald. It's concise, simple, and gets to what I would expect of a student proposing to engage in a substantive discussion. I think it also helps to eliminate that "I agree with so-and-so" response. Sat, 09 May 2020 16:32:28 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870956 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870956 This sentence identifies a problem I have too. Especially if a student is joining a particular discussion later on, it can be overwhelming to get "read in." There is the article itself and then that winds up being doubled in length by the comments. Should discussions be somehow limited? If we are presenting a course as asynchronous, then it should be it should be as manageable later in the week as earlier. Sun, 10 May 2020 17:04:24 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870918 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870918 This paragraph gets to something I see as the principal challenge not only with online discussions, but with online education as a whole. A great deal of human formation can and does happen in the classroom as students--and I am thinking primarily of seminarians--have to find ways to navigate emotions and face-to-face interactions in such a way as to become bridges and not obstacles to truth. There is more than just a learning of content that happens and there are more problems than simply those related to learning content that can be identified in the classroom. The best an online discussion can teach in that realm is good "netiquette," and I don't know that there is a way around that. Sat, 09 May 2020 15:59:05 -0400 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870898 https://nowcomment.com/documents/140998?scroll_to=1870898 I can certainly testify to the time it takes since that is pretty much what I do in intro and intermediate Latin for about 30 students twice a week. Fortunately, my comments don't usually need to go beyond just grammatical and spelling corrections like everyone else's. On that front, though, especially for Latin, I think the students who struggle will get as much help from the students who do not as they will from me. The last sentence of the previous paragraph (11) addresses that. If the discussion can be set up in such a way that students can help one another, then we can step back a bit and guide the process rather than taking on all the work ourselves. Sat, 09 May 2020 15:32:19 -0400