Reading Responses

Each class session (except week 1) will have required papers. Some weeks may have a modifier (choose 1, or choose 2 of 3, etc.) which will be in the calendar for that week, and also announced the class beforehand.

Everyone should read the papers. You don’t need to memorize the contents of the papers, but you should be ready to talk about them in a group setting.

If you’re not a discussion lead that week, you should also make at least one post to the ed board about the reading with a tag for that week.

You should make your post by EOD (“End of Day”) Saturday before class, so the discussion leaders can read the posts and incorporate them into their plans for Monday’s discussion.

Everyone has 1 “free skip” week, in addition to 1 week off when leading, so over the course of the quarter you should post in 7 of the weeks.

The goal is for you to demonstrate you’ve engaged with the reading, and get some practice expressing your ideas clearly and concisely. We are not going to word-count posts or grade them like an essay, but for calibration you should aim for ~200 words. See below for some possible post structures you could use.

Here are some example styles of posts for inspiration! You should try and make different kinds of posts throughout the quarter to get some practice analyzing the class topics through different lenses.

These posts should focus on what the big ideas are in the papers, and what the key takeaways should be for a reader. They should be more nuanced than just a section-by-section summary. You should think about what’s really important to your audience (this class) about these papers, and support and ground your argument with facts from the papers.

These types of posts are probably easy to make about most papers

What are the business and ecosystem implications of these papers? Think about how the systems or ideas in this papers impact the market and technology landscape.

• What’s holding this idea back?
• Would it make a good business?
• Would people use it?
• How would you market this idea and why?
• What works remains to be done?

This style of post might be harder to do for some papers. Your post can usually focus on one paper of the set, but you should inform your arguments by the context from the other papers.

This type of posts explores what were the key commonalities between the readings this week, and what were the big differences. Think how the papers relate to each other. At a meta-level, you can also consider how the papers presented their arguments, and what was the context for the work. Was one more convincing than the other? Is one approach more appropriate in certain situations?

This style of post is probably doable for most sets of papers.

As a PMP class, everyone is bringing in lots of unique background context to the class! In this types of post, talk about how the papers relate to your other experiences and understanding from outside the class. You might also consider how this week’s papers relate to the other papers we’ve read this quarter, or how the paper fits into the overall historical development of the networking field.

You might also consider if there are ethical implications of a paper, or if the paper relates to current events.

Probably easier to do in later weeks, or situationally depending on your background

Last, but probably the most important and most interesting, in this type of post you should think critically about a post already made by one of your classmates and respond to it. Remember to keep your responses in a positive and constructive tone, like you would use when working with another teammate at work or a mentee.

Consider how your classmate’s idea challenges your own interpretation of the paper. Did you have any new ideas after reading your classmate’s post? What questions do you have now after doing the reading and processing your classmate’s post? Be sure to ground your argument in the readings!

This style will depend on how many other posts have been made so far when you go to make your post