McPherson Q&A Assignment Wiki McPherson Q&A Assignment Forum McPherson Q&A Assignment Instructions Overview The class has been divided into 8 different groups, each with from 6 to 7 members. During the first week of this two-week assignment, you and your group members will use a Moodle wiki (a common workspace) to develop and write 3 questions for each of the McPherson chapters (8 through 18) that you've been assigned to read thus far. So that is 11 chapters, 33 questions, all due by the Sunday at 11:55pm deadline. This assignment has a second part. Next week, your group will "compete" against another group. Both groups will post their 33 questions in a Moodle forum for the opposing group members to answer by a Wednesday deadline. All group members will participate in scoring, awarding points, and providing feedback to the opposing group members for correct answers. How You Will Be Graded You will receive a "group grade" for creating the required number of appropriate and relevant questions, correctly answering the opposing group's questions. There will also be an opportunity to provide private/confidential feedback about the participation and efforts of your own group members, and this will certainly have an effect on your grade. As you already know, Moodle tracks every login, every click you make, everything you type, and the time you spend online. So it will be quite easy for me to verify what positive or negative things your own group members will write about you. So be active and involved, communicate regularly, and do your share of the work. This is what your group members and I expect of you over these next two weeks. Hints, Strong Suggestions, and Other Requirements Using A Wiki You will ABSOLUTELY need to type up your work in a word processor and copy and paste it into your wiki work area. When you are editing a wiki, you are temporarily preventing others from adding their own work, until you have finished. Since copying and pasting is quick, you won't monopolize the wiki space for very long. Suggestion However you divide up the chapters and questions is up to each group, but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you do NOT assign an entire chapter to just one person. First, there would be no one else to check if the most important themes/events were being addressed in that person's questions. Second, the purpose of this assignment is help everyone "master" the material in ALL of the chapters. After all, your midterm exam will require you to know more information than is covered in just one or two chapters. Requirement When you develop your questions on the wiki, you MUST also provide the answers AND McPherson page numbers. This will allow group members to check your work and help edit, rewrite, or rephrase the question for clarity. (Of course, you will NOT give the answers to the group you are competing against next week.) On a final note, the purpose of this assignment is NOT to create "trick" questions, or questions that require bizarre knowledge of minuscule facts that can only be found in three words of one sentence buried deep inside a chapter. Instead, the questions should be meaningful and appropriate to students taking a topical class specific to the American Civil War, such as this one. your other group members from adding their own work to the wiki , then answer them, on material you have been reading about in chapters 8-15 in the McPherson book Battle Cry of Freedom. In short, each student will post AT LEAST one question (by the Wednesday deadline), and answer another student's question (by the Saturday deadline). You have been reading and taking notes on the McPherson chapters since the midterm exam. In this forum, you will create an "exam" question, in a format similar to your weekly quizzes... a fill in the blank/short answer type. You will compose one question for each chapter (from chapters 21 to 26), focusing, of course, on the most important material you discovered in that chapter. You will create ONE new post/discussion for EACH of your SIX questions. The subject line of your post MUST begin with the chapter number and brief description of your question. For example: Chapter 22 - Lincoln's disappointment after Gettysburg To make a post, click the Add a New Discussion Topic button below. All six questions (posts) are due by the Thursday 9pm deadline. You will then answer SIX questions posed by SIX DIFFERENT STUDENTS. (replies) Of course, each question can only be answered CORRECTLY once by the earliest reply. Only incorrectly answered questions can have a second (or third) reply made to them. VERY IMPORTANT - You may NOT begin answering any questions until Thursday at 9:01pm. This will give all students an equal opportunity to choose and answer. (I will delete all replies/answers with times prior to 9:01pm on that Thursday date.) Assignment 2 Connecting McPherson to Burns Instructions Each week you have been asked to read weekly objectives (and concepts and names) for each of the 4 video episodes that you have seen so far. I have now posted each of the weekly objectives as its own forum topic. During this one-week assignment, you will be required to answer any THREE of these objectives. IMPORTANT - This is a first come, first served assignment. Each topic may have a MAXIMUM of three replies. You can easily see the number of replies from the forum home page. Once the number of replies has reached "3", then that topic is closed. (I will probably move them to a "placeholder" forum where all students can read the comments, but can no longer reply.) DO NOT PROCRASTINATE - If you are "late" in posting your answers, and your post reads just like the one that another student posted before you, then it will be very difficult to receive a high score. However, if you research your McPherson book and "dig up" another applicable reference page or two that your predecessor has missed, then that will definitely be beneficial to your score. EXTRA CREDIT - Remembering that Moodle keeps track of the dates and times of your posts, if, by Friday at 5pm, you see that any of the objective "topics" have only received 2 or fewer replies, you may answer JUST ONE MORE of the objectives. In every assignment I ask you to complete, I am interested more in quality than quantity, so do an excellent job on your first three topics that are required, before you decide to complete the extra credit (if available). All student comments/replies are due by the Saturday deadline. EXPECTATIONS AND SCORING Like your last forum, each answer will receive a score from 0 to 3, with 3 being "excellent". Your goal is to earn 9 points for the week. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: The name of this assignment is Connecting McPherson to Burns. In order to receive ANY CREDIT WHATSOEVER for you answers, you MUST, I repeat MUST address the objective topic using SPECIFIC page numbers, quotes (direct or indirect), and references made in the McPherson book as your only source for your answers. There is a reason, beyond the fact that James McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize, that Ken Burns chose to have students nationwide use this particular book with his film when it first aired 20 years ago, in 1990, on PBS. In this assignment, you must find and reveal this connection. Finally, you should know that this assignment is worth approximately TWICE the amount of a single weekly quiz. (The maximum score of "9" will be multiplied by 3, for a total of 27 points. Each weekly quiz is about 15 points.) HOW I WILL SCORE YOUR POSTS AND REPLIES No credit will be given to posts that fail to include the specific page number references in the McPherson book. 3 - Excellent post or reply, containing analysis, depth, or credible support for any statement. Student clearly asks or answers the question, has clearly contemplated the question or dilemma, or illustrates comprehension and an understanding of the issue. Response is well-written, free of grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors. 2 - A fine post or reply which does not quite rise to the level of a "3", but nevertheless, adds to the academic knowledge level of the the group. 1 - A post or reply that is not well written or supported or one that fails to address the question or issue at hand. 0 - Off topic, poorly written (typos, spelling, etc.), or inappropriate to the analytical level of this assignment Moodle Docs for this page You are logged in as Joe Escobar (Logout) HST 209 W11 (Escobar META 32444 34336) EXPECTATIONS AND SCORING Each question and answer will receive a score from 0 to 3, with 3 being "excellent". To receive the maximum credit for this assignment, you will need to ask at least one "excellent" question and provide one "excellent" answer by the deadlines. Your goal is to earn 6 points for the week. NOTE: I will not grade student work until the end of the assignment, so you do not have a chance to ask me "how am I doing" or "can you tell me what my score is". I am providing you with all of the guidelines in this instruction page AND I am also providing you with an example of what I'm looking for. Click here to see a sample question and answer that are both "excellent", earning full-credit for this assignment. My "grading goal" is that each student is able to achieve the maximum grade for this assignment. Therefore, even though you are required to post a single question and answer, a student *may* post a maximum of two questions. In this way, if either question fails to earn the maximum score, the sum of the scores for the two questions should definitely earn the maximum score. IMPORTANT: You may only answer a single question posed by another student. The only way you can answer two questions posed by other students (again, assuring a maximum score for the assignment), is if you post two questions yourself. No questions may be posed after the Wednesday deadline, so you must make up your mind about the extra question and extra answer before then. WARNING MISSING DEADLINES AS A GROUP MEMBER: If you fail to post a question by the Wednesday deadline, you are not entitled to answer any student questions and will be removed from the group. Here's the reason... How can you NOT post a question yourself, then go ahead and expect to answer other student questions, leaving those students without any questions to answer themselves? Finally, you should know that this assignment is worth approximately TWICE the amount of a single weekly quiz. (The maximum score of "6" will be multiplied by 5, for a total of 30 points. Each weekly quiz is about 15 points.) HOW I WILL SCORE YOUR POSTS AND REPLIES 3 - Excellent post or reply, containing analysis, depth, or credible support for any statement. Student clearly asks or answers the question, has clearly contemplated the question or dilemma, or illustrates comprehension and an understanding of the issue. Response is well-written, free of grammatical, spelling or punctuation errors. 2 - A fine post or reply which does not quite rise to the level of a "3", but nevertheless, adds to the academic knowledge level of the the group. 1 - A post or reply that is not well written or supported or one that fails to address the question or issue at hand. 0 - Off topic, poorly written (typos, spelling, etc.), or inappropriate to the analytical level of this assignment (Who was the president of the Confederacy?) THE FINER DETAILS * To reply to a person's specific question/post, be sure to click the specific blue "reply link" of the post you are replying to. (this is called maintaining a “thread” and it will keep the questions and answers organized) * Use proper academic language and etiquette (avoid slang, smilies, all lower-case text, internet chat abbreviations such as IMHO or OMG, etc.). I cannot emphasize enough, that a post or reply filled with spelling and grammar mistakes shows a real lack of effort, especially in this day of spelling and grammar checkers. * Cite your sources when you make statements that are not considered common knowledge. (McPherson p.147) or (Ward p.89) or (Video Episode 1) Again, see the "excellent" example question and answer. * This forum allows you to add pictures directly to your posts. When appropriate, include them. See the INSTRUCTIONS videos in the top Moodle "block" if you don't already know how to do this. Moodle Docs for this page You are logged in as Joe Escobar (Logout) HST 209 W11 (Escobar META 32444 34336)