It is important that all students play an active part in class dialog throughout the course. This is especially important when discussing Harm DeBlij’s Why Geography Matters. While all discussions of in-class material and assigned readings will be assessed through class participation, discussion of the assigned chapters in DeBlij’s book will be more formally assessed. Full in-class participation in these discussions is desirable but not always practicable. Some students tend more than others to be comfortable speaking up and providing their thoughts and analysis on various subjects. As such, all students are required to create a series of discussion points for each assigned reading. The purpose of these discussion points is to prepare you for the in-class discussion as well as to show that you are indeed prepared. This way, if for some reason you do not or are unable to participate in the discussion as much as you would like, you can show you were at least prepared to do so.
The discussion points documents should follow this template.