One of the goals of journaling in this class is to introduce you to and give you practice in the expectations of academic discourse. Responding to classmates' journals/blogs/essays as described below will not only do that, but it will help you develop ideas for essays later in the class. In journaling, responses tend to fall into one of the three types. What we are shooting for when we talk about academic discourse, is the third type of response. Those are the responses that will earn you full credit. With each assignment you are expected to respond to at least three entries posted by your classmates; at least one of your responses should be a response to one of the responses to your journal.

1. Affective Responses are expressions of personal views and/or responses. These sorts of responses tell the reader what the writer thinks about the topic, nothing more.
2. Cohesive Responses will contain the elements of an affective response while also trying to acknowledge the presence or work of others but without seeking any feedback or contribution from the original writer or other readers.
3. Interactive Responses contain elements of both affective and cohesive responses while actively and explicitly seeking feedback and responses from other writers while incorporating thoughts, passages and ideas from the writer they are responding to at the very least, and other responses as well. To take advantage of the medium (the blog) they will also provide links to those comments or ideas that add to the discussion, whether part of the class blog or material found elsewhere on the internet.

Blogging should be agonistic, deliberative and collaborative. That means we should argue with each other, politely. This is part of what makes blogging a pedagogically sound activity for the development of academic discourse. This happens when we read and respond to one another's posts, when we respond to one another's responses and acknowledge and account for others' perspectives in our own posts. Interactive responses are what is being sought and the only sort of response that will be awarded full credit when it comes time to tally grades.