The commentaries submitted to the discussion board should be roughly 300 words, and will be used to support in-class discussions and potentially online discussions. They will be graded as follows:
To receive the full points for a posting, you will need to clearly state and support your ideas. Some students have a hard time supporting their ideas. Look at the following two excerpts (courtesy of the textbook author):
Example 1: What is my definition of hate speech? Well from what I learned in the Hate.com video, the National Alliance Web site and other resources, hate speech is any racist and/or anti-Semitic speech or text. It is usually a controversial topic with the intension of hurting, intimidating or inciting violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people. Hate speech has been around for many years and can be based on one or more aspects of a person's identity. These include a person's or group's racial background, age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language ability, moral or political views among others. According to our book, Gift of Fire, hate speech that does not specifically incite violence is subject to First Amendment protection.
Example 2: I think hate speech is words intended to reflect negative views on religion, sexual orientation, occupation, gender, race, etc. Speech is protected under our First Amendment and is a freedom that people feel very strongly about, but I feel that just like any other offensive or objectionable action that can lead to outrage and violence should have limitations.
Example 1 clearly states the student's ideas. It draws on the resources available to the student (a video, website, and the textbook) to support the ideas. Example 2 also clearly states the student's ideas, but the ideas are not as complete. No support for the ideas is offered.