Social Commments

Social comments may include:

• compliments to a fellow student for an interesting or informative post pieces of humor that adds spice to the discussion

• encouragement to a fellow student to add further information to an already interesting post

• comments that might only be tangentially related to the course material but that create interest in the dialog (see third example below)

• a personal experience that is at least tangentially related but that may not satisfy one of the knowledge-building criteria (see fourth example)

Examples

"Cindy, thanks for your explanation of the statistical and dynamical downscaling of global climate model results. Your explanation made a lot more sense to me than the reading material."

"Robert, you raised a legitimate concern on the effect of wind turbines on migratory birds. I am wondering if in your research you found evidence that there is a high migratory bird mortality rate in regions having operating wind turbines."

"One unit talked about extreme weather events increasing with global warming. I heard that Iowa State University became the home of the Cyclones instead of the home of the Cardinals in the late 1800s because of some extreme weather events. Can any of the meteorology students tell me what those events were?"

"Over spring break I went with a group of Agronomy students to Costa Rica, and we discussed deforestation with some University of Costa Rica students one night at a party. They consider people in the US to be very hypocritical for criticizing tropical countries for deforestation while driving gas-guzzling SUVs."