writing a discussion post

You just wrote one

I have to do a lot of discussion boards for my RN-BSN and basically you need to do research on the topic and relate it to nursing and then given examples of how you will use the information or how nurses in general can use the information in practice.

Annie

Basically just make sure you fully answer the prompt and meet whatever requirements your instructor has set. In my program discussion our original posts are supposed to be 200-500 words, and responses to other students' posts are to be 100-300 words and our only requirements are that we fully answer the prompt and turn it in on time.

Wait .... what? Faculty are turfing off their responsibility to model and facilitate educational conversation with expectant learners to the great anonymous Internet? Oh, lord. This is (I would say literally, but it's manifestly not, because here it is!) unbelievable.

What happens when you try to initiate leadership-type conversations in real life and you don't get to do it quite this way, and your respondents certainly don't? How does this online chatting prepare you for, like, practice?

Yeah, I know, you turn in a printout of your "conversation." I suppose some would say that's not an awful lot different from "process recordings." The critical difference, to my mind, is that you cannot know with whom you are interacting. You have no assurance that you're interacting with actual nurses, patients, or other professional associates. For all I would know, as an instructor, you could make it all up the night before it's due.

This is deplorable, and lazy on the part of the instructor.

Don't you have a way in which you communicate for your class, like blackboard or something similar? I assume your professor would want the students to have discussions together. At least any professor I've had felt that way.

It doesn't make any sense to just go out into the internet & talk to random people & have no real way to record it. This is an odd assignment.

Through my school, we were required to do discussion posts every week.

It's not done on some random site for strangers, it's done through the school Web program that only students enrolled in the course and the instructor have visibility to. We were also required to respond to at least two posts.

I'm assuming this is what the OP is referring to.

If so, check your syllabus, there should be instructions on expectations and requirements for the discussion post.

That totally makes more sense.... discussion post on the school's/ class' site. I was right there with Green... having the vapors.

::: fanning fevered brow ::

Better now.

My RN-to-BSN program had a lot of discussion posts also; they were done on the class'so page on the school's portal. The instructor would have a mini-rubric for the discussion, but in general she'd want to see a synthesis of the reading, evidence of in-depth thought, and proper APA citations. Yes, even for discussions. ;-)

That totally makes more sense.... discussion post on the school's/ class' site. I was right there with Green... having the vapors.

::: fanning fevered brow ::

Better now.

Haha you two can cool your jets now!

I would sincerely hope an instructor wouldn't require their students to post a discussion thread on a public site.

...but then again, things are crazy nowadays and I'm sure it happens somewhere!

Sometime last year a bunch of students posted very similar questions in one of the fora. One even said what school they were from. Yeah.