Discussion setup

I have one discussion topic per chapter and the assignment is for students to write a two-paragraph commentary on the chapter. To help them get started I provide several prompts and say they could choose to respond to one of those. To encourage peer interaction I give extra credit for replies:

• Original author: 16 points possible for the original post
  2 points per quality reply
  1 point per courtesy reply
• Reply author: 8 points for a quality reply that is properly supported (quotes and page nos.)
  4 points for a quality reply
  1 point for a courtesy reply

I do not limit extra credit, and some enterprising students are testing how far they can go, so I added the following additional rules:

• No points for additional posts by the original author in the same thread
• Only the highest quality post gets graded for reply authors in the same thread

For the next time I teach with this, I will add the additional rule:

• Only the highest quality post gets graded for reply authors on the same specific topic anywhere in that chapter discussion topic (all those original authors still get extra credit for writing a post that inspires a reply)