R305O Flow Chart

**Flow Chart**
**of Weekly Pattern of Activities**
**Religion 102O & 305O**
**Last revised: 1/8/02**
.	Mondays	Tuesdays	Wednesdays	Thursdays	Fridays	Saturdays	Sundays
Groups:	Group Chat Room	Individual Work	Individual Work	Group Interaction	Group Interaction	Group Interaction	Individual Work
Group Leader	Set up session Make sure forum assignments questions have been divided up among members of the group from the questions for exam 3. The topic numbers are posted in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server as separate Forums. The leader must arbitrarily assign questions to members who do not participate in the chat session.	.	Make sure all members have answered assigned questions in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Read and interact to answered questions from other members of your group in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Read and interact to answered questions from other members of your group in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Read and interact to answered questions from other members of your group in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Complete the online report containing forum group members activities, as well as questions, answers and discussion.
Group Member	Participate. Remember this is graded! Request forum assignments Gain clarification of assignment	Answer assigned forum questions in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server. How do you do this?	Answer assigned forum questions in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Read and interact to answered questions from other members of your group in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Read and interact to answered questions from other members of your group in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Read and interact to answered questions from other members of your group in the Discussion Board of the Blackboard server.	Complete your online individual weekly report form.

OBSERVATIONS:

The weekly time spent on the course should be approximately the same as with an onground class.
Undergraduate classes should require for every hour of scheduled class time about another hour of work outside of class.
The responsibilities of the forum leader should equal the responsibilities of the forum group member.
Each group member should have no more than 4 or 5 questions to answer each week. At times the number will be less.
The "Take-Home" Questions page for each chapter will list the questions.

ANSWERING THE ASSIGNED QUESTIONS:

Figuring out what questions I have to answer:

From the Schedule page, learn the range of questions assigned to your group for that week from the List of Topics. These are listed under your group with hyperlinks to the List of Topics section.
From your weekend Group meeting (either Virtual Chat or email) led by the Group Leader for that week, learn the specific questions assigned to you from the List of Topics.

Answering my questions:

Copy the Topic headings and the questions assigned to you and paste them into a document file such as MS Word that you have created on your computer in the My Documents folder (sub-directory). Be sure to save this document frequently and make a backup copy on a floppy disk in case you have computer problems.
Answer your questions in the above document file,
Use the following sources: the two designated textbooks and/or hyperlinks provided with each question.
Be thorough in your answers. Mere copying material from sources constitutes plagiarism, which seriously violates the GWU Honor Code and can lead to dismissal from the university. Serious penalty will be imposed in the grading process. My philosophy in answering questions is this: the answer comes in through the eyes, proceedes through the brain with a pause for reflection, and comes out through the finger.

Posting my answers in the Blackboard Discussion Board:

Once you have answered all your assigned questions, you now need to upload them in the Blackboard Server Discussion Board.
In the R305O Course Room click on Blackboard and log in to the course.

1. Click on COMMUNICATION section.

2. Click on DISCUSSION BOARD hyperlink.

3. Scroll down the list of FORUMS (=topic #s) to the desired number and click on.

4. Scoll down the list of THREADS (=questions) to the desired one and click on.

5. Click on REPLY button and insert your answer in the Message field by copying and pasting from the above MS Word document.

6. Click on SUBMIT button.

SETTING UP A GROUP CHAT SESSION IN THE GWU BLACKBOARD SERVER:

Log on to the GWU Blackboard server using your User ID and Password
Click on the Communication button.
Click on the Group Pages hyperlink.
Click on the appropriate group, then click on Group Virtual Classroom.
Click on Enter Virtual Classroom.
Give this some time to build the chat session.

**Explanation of the Way the Course Works**
During Week One of the Semester: One of the scheduled Orientation Sessions must be completed. Participation in one of the sessions is a requirement for continued enrollment in the course. Advanced registration for a session can be completed online by filling out the Registration Form. Additionally, the Class Roster page contains a list of activities that are to be completed during the first week of the semester. These are listed in the purple columns with appropriate hyperlinks so that you can access them from inside this page. Weekly cycle beginning at the end of Week One On a week by week basis the course will work along these lines: On the Weekend each group, at the initiative of the group leader for that week, will make contact with one another to divvy out the questions assigned to the group for the coming week in the Schedule page. This can be done in a variety of ways: (1) the group leader for that week just assigned each member a number of questions and then email this to each member of the group; (2) the group get together in a Group Chat session inside the GWU Blackboard server; (3) the group leader phone members with their assignments. I, as your professor, don't have a preference about how the assignments are made. My concern is that by Sunday evening every member of each group knows exactly which questions he/she is expected to answer during the coming week. From Monday through Wednesday each member works individually answering his/her assigned questions following the steps described above. Once the questions have been satisfactorily answered, then the answers need to be posted in the GWU Blackboard Discussion Board in the appropriate location following the above procedures. From Thursday through Friday each member should interact with the answers that his/her fellow group members have posted (not the entire class; just your own group members!). From the Schedule page, jot down the range to topics assigned to your group for that week. Then, go back into the GWU Blackboard Discussion Board using the same procedure that you followed for posting your own answers, and scroll down to this range of topics until you find the questions and answers by the members of your group. Read each answer and interact with it with questions for clarification, add additional supplementary answer, challenge the existing answer etc. Your week participation grade is based in part on your interaction. If a member hasn't answered his/her questions, make note of that. On Saturday take about 15 minutes to complete your Individual Weekly Report form that is completed online. This report, which reports on the above activities, will be assigned a grade. These become the weekly quiz which students in my day classes have each week. If you have served as a Group Leader for the week, you will not fill out this form, instead you will fill out the Group Leader's Weekly Report form.