This discussion board forum will focus on the reading and listening assignments from Week 3. You can opt to discuss Chapter 2 of the textbook, Essential Cases in the Development of Public Health Ethics, Peter Saul’s podcast Let’s Talk About Dying, or The Believed podcast, The Good Guy.
This forum closes on the Thursday of Week 4.
The following Discussion Board forums focus on weekly reading or listening assignments. In the syllabus, you read that Discussion Posts are a required element of the course, and below is where you will participate in those discussions.
All students are expected to participate in all 10 discussions. Participation includes posting a message or replying to another students post.
All posts should be written in your own words and be referenced and cited with at least one scholarly peer-reviewed journal article to support your position. That means even if you are replying to another persons posts, your post still needs to be original, and referenced, and cited with a scholarly peer-reviewed journal article. The reason that PRJA citations and references are a requirement is that it elevates the discussion. The citation also allows readers to understand exactly what portion of the post is paraphrased from the reference. No direct quotes are allowed – paraphrasing is expected.
The source in which you are required to reference and cite in your discussion posts needs to come from a peer-reviewed journal article. A book (textbook or otherwise) is not appropriate. Your post and reference need to be original – not something that another student has posted and or used.
You must include an APA or AMA formatted citation and reference in your post. Discussion participants may include the instructor or students. The post must pertain to the discussion board issue in which it is being posted.
Posts must be respectful of peers and show an insightful response to a topic related to ethics in health care.
Your post will be evaluated using the following criteria:
Quality of Post (content, logic, depth, breadth) 8 points: The quality (8 of the 20 points) of the post is of primary importance. The content, logic, depth, and breadth of your post are central to my assessment of the post’s quality. It should be your original writing and the material you cite and reference to support should be of the highest quality. It is not purely a message indicating your opinion. The support must come from at least one Peer-Reviewed Journal Article (PRJA). The lack of a PRJA affects the overall quality of the post.
The support of a peer-reviewed journal article 4 points: How the PRJA supports the content of the post is critical (4 of to 20 points). The PRJA should provide meaningful evidence to the cited portion of your message.
Grammar, construction, academic tone 4 points: The tone of the Required Discussion Board forums is formal. It is wise for you to evaluate the writing of your post using an editor, like grammarly.com. The basic grammarly.com editor (not the premium version) is an essential tool for you to use. Grammarly.com is free and gives you nearly immediate feedback with suggestions for improvement.
Reference properly constructed 3 points and Citation properly constructed – 1 point: The reference (3 points out of 20 points) and the citation (1 point out of 20 points) should be properly constructed. A folder on the course website contains resources that will help you with APA and AMA style. These two styles are the only ones accepted in this class. Pick one and use it throughout an assignment.
To post a message, click the name of the forum on the left side of the page. On the next page, click the phrase “Create Thread”. Follow the prompts to indicate a subject and enter your message. Finally, click “Submit”.
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Peer-reviewed articles (PRJA) are a subset of scholarly articles. They are special because they are published in academic journals that explicitly state that submitted manuscripts will undergo peer-review.
In academic publishing, the goal of peer review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal. Before an article is deemed appropriate to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, it must undergo the following process:
- The author of the article must submit it to the journal editor who forwards the article to experts in the field. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered the authors peers (hence peer review).
- These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript.
- The peer reviewers check the manuscript for accuracy and assess the validity of the research methodology and procedures.
- If appropriate, they suggest revisions. If they find the article lacking in scholarly validity and rigor, they reject it.
Because a peer-reviewed journal will not publish articles that fail to meet the standards established for a given discipline, peer-reviewed articles that are accepted for publication exemplify the best research practices in a field.
PRJAs do not come from magazines or newspapers. Magazine and newspaper articles sometimes identify peer-reviewed journal articles, so it is possible to use them in order to find a peer-reviewed journal article.
A published journal is the entity that defines whether or not its articles are peer reviewed.
Once you find an article that appears to support your response, you should check with the journal to determine if it is peer reviewed or not. These days virtually all journals will have a website.
Lets say that you have articles from 3 periodicals that appear to support your response. They are , , and .
If a journal does not state that it is peer-reviewed, it is not. Do not cite or reference sourced without an explicit statement that it is peer-reviewed on the journals website. You will see that both JAMA and Nature are peer-reviewed, but the New Your Times is not.
