Discussion Board: How do you want to be known by others?

The following are some tips faculty can share with students.

1. Always post in a scholarly manner when you are responding to a discussion board post for your course. What you write is how you represent yourself to others. How do you want to be known?
2. Avoid spelling, mechanical and grammatical errors. First, write your response to the discussion board question in a word processing program such as MS Word and then spell check the document. Finally, copy and paste your answer to the discussion board.
   If you are asked to cite references to substantiate your response to the discussion board question, do cite your resources correctly using the preferred citation style identified by your instructor (Chicago, MLA or APA). The NCSU Library has a number of reference sources available: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/searchcollection/reference-tools/style-guides.html as well as a citation builder http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/lobo2/citationbuilder/citationbuilder.php .
3. Avoid using texting acronyms in your scholarly response to the discussion board. Such acronyms are best used in an informal environment but do not reflect academic writing. Also as a reminder, several of the students in your distance courses may be from other countries and may be unfamiliar with the acronyms you use and this informal approach to writing.
4. Be sure to represent your own ideas when you post. The following is a tutorial that will outline copyright infringement, what plagiarism is, and how plagiarism is viewed at NCSU. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dspc/tutorial/plagiarism/index.html
5. Follow rules of netiquette when posting to the discussion board. Virginia Shea outlines some of the Core Rules of Netiquette in an excerpt from her book Netiquette: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html

Cleo Magnuson
Instructional Designer
NCSU-DELTA