Throughout the semester, we will continue discussions we are having in class (or start new ones) on our OpenLab course site. There are low-stakes conversations, but crucial to our work together this semester (consistent, engaged participation in OpenLab Class Discussions is a significant component of your OpenLab Composing grade for the semester).

The goal is to participate early and often, to ensure good virtual discussions that will help you to think critically about the readings/ideas/projects of the course. Therefore, your comments need not be very long: for example, you can provide an idea, provocation (question meant to spark discussion/debate), provide quote/citation (MLA format) and a few sentences of explanation of how/why it functions in the context of some larger issue/question, raise questions, complicate issues, extend discussions, analyze a new media text, etc. You can also link to outside sources, broadening the scope of our conversation beyond the texts we are reading together, and strengthening your ability to find/analyze/synthesize various pieces of evidence in support of claims/arguments.

For each Class Discussion, you should provide initial responses (in the form of “comments”) as soon as possible, to get the conversation going, and then return to the Discussion to continue it, posting multiple comments, and also responding to others (not just to the initial prompt). If you’ve already discussed some of these instances in your previous blogs or in class, you should feel free to draw on that material. The Class Discussions will remain open through the semester, so you should feel free to continue the conversation even beyond the original week we are actively discussing it: your ideas will continue to grow/change as you do your work, so our Class Discussions remain an living archive/forum to return to, a space for us to work through this evolving knowledge of new media composing.