The discussion of literature is not something that can easily be confined to three hours, once a week. Instead, it is and should be a pervasive thing, one that takes place outside the formal classroom as well as within it. In recognition of this, students in LIT 203 are required to make no less than five substantive posts each week to the course's Blackboard page in forums set aside for that purpose (the threads will be labeled as "Discussion Thread" and will be numbered). Posts should focus on discussing works that classroom talk could not cover and responses to in-class and online discussions.
A substantive post will do more than simply note agreement or disagreement with a concept or idea, voiced in an earlier post or otherwise. A substantive post will advance an idea, expressing it, offering evidence in support of it, and explaining how the evidence serves to support the idea. All such evidence will need to be accounted for appropriately, and explanations will need to be thoroughgoing and rigorous. In effect, a substantive post is an intellectual argument, one ideally in dialogue with those already ongoing in class discussion. The underlying idea is meaningfully discussed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick in "Peer Review, Judgment, and Reading," whose comments are well worth reading.
Work Cited
Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Peer Review, Judgment, and Reading." Profession (2011): 196-201. Print.