Discussion Forum Guidelines

You are expected to create and maintain a positive learning environment by respecting the following standards:

1. Be respectful of your fellow students. Insulting, condescending, or abusive posts are not permitted. Treat your classmates as you would in a face-to-face setting. Lively debate of ideas can be an important means of learning in an academic setting, but it is never acceptable to attack another person.

2. Be respectful and sensitive to the feelings of others when discussing race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or controversial topics.

3. Post appropriately. Inappropriate (eg., pornographic or offensive) or unattributed copyrighted content is not permitted in the forums. Do not use the forums to market, advertise, or promote outside products or organizations.

Posts that violate these guidelines may be deleted or made invisible to other students by any forum moderators including instructors, co-instructors, and instructional staff, with the approval of the course instructor. Students who repeatedly break these rules will face consequences up to and including possible removal from the course or program.

More tips for effective posts:

1. Use informative titles. Keep your post titles short and on-topic so the forums are easier to navigate. If you’re asking a question, it should go in the title.

2. Make it easy to read. Don’t capitalize or bold entire sentences since this makes the forums harder to read. Check your posts for spelling or grammatical errors.

3. Stay on topic. Don’t change the topic of a thread or split a thread into multiple discussions.  Start a new thread instead.