Comments Policy

To enhance your learning and make your experience on the course more connected and profound, we encourage you to interact on SHARESPACE.

Our policy is that after you post your work to SHARESPACE you can:

Showcase your work and see your classmates’ work
Receive comments on your work and benefit from gaining another perspective
Give comments on your classmates’ work and benefit from seeing another perspective and more profound reflection
Learn to be cool through being kind

Comments are Cool if they are Kind

According to Hattie and Timperley (2007)

“Feedback is one of the most powerful influences on learning and achievement but this impact can be either positive or negative.” (p. 81)

Comments are feedback and feedback is essential to helping us know if we’re on the right track and having a positive impact. Everybody likes to get positive feedback. Look at how you feel when you get lots of or s on a Facebook or Instagram post. Look at how YouTube Vloggers ask for comments so they can learn what direction to go in and build their following.

Getting no comments or negative comments doesn’t make anyone feel good because it doesn’t benefit our learning or help us progress. This doesn’t mean that you should blindly give or expect to receive a or a for whatever you do. That would be equally unhelpful. That’s why Facebook, Instagram and YouTube always provide a section for comments.

How do I give Cool Comments?

Easy! Give a or a and add a comment to justify and explain your reaction Check out some examples below:

Thanks for this: I appreciate the way you added that story to highlight why you felt alone even though you had host country friends around you. It really made me feel your pain and I think knowing about your experience will help me feel less alone when I am in my host culture. Thanks.
I noticed: I noticed you gave a clear explanation of Hofstede’s theory on Power Distance which helped me better understand the theory. Perhaps you could add in a few examples to clearly show the difference between your culture and your host’s culture. This would help me as I’m planning on visiting the same host culture and I want to avoid making any faux pas!
You opened my mind: I was really interested to see your perspective on this. I hadn’t thought about culture as something so simple before. I’m not sure if I agree with your definition as it seems to me that there is more to include but thanks for opening my mind to another way of seeing things.
I wonder: It occurred to me that there might be another reason for this kind of behaviour. I wonder if it might be related to Hall’s theory of low context communication. What do you think?

Be Cool, Be Kind!

Remember, you don’t have to agree and you can point out shortcomings but always be kind and helpful in your comments. Comments are only cool if they are kind.