My professor marked me down for "lack of engagement" after I wrote the most substantive post in the thread
I genuinely do not know what to do with this feedback.
We had a discussion prompt this week about whether informed consent is truly possible in an age of algorithmic manipulation. I spent about two hours on my response. I cited three sources, walked through the philosophical argument from two angles, and raised a question at the end for my classmates to push back on.
Nobody pushed back. Most people wrote things like "great point, I never thought of it that way" and moved on. A few quoted my own post back to me with a slightly different sentence structure.
My professor left a comment saying my post lacked "collaborative engagement with peers" and docked five points. Not for the content. For the engagement.
I went back and read the rubric again. It says to "actively build on peer contributions." But if nobody writes anything worth building on, what exactly am I supposed to do? Invent a disagreement? Pretend a three-sentence summary of the reading introduced a new idea?
The part that really gets me is that two of my classmates got full marks. I read their posts. One of them wrote "This really resonates with me, especially your second point" eleven words into their reply and then restated the prompt. That was apparently sufficient collaborative engagement.
I emailed my professor asking for clarification on what a stronger response would have looked like. She said I should try to "meet my peers where they are."
I don't even know what that means in this context. Meet them where they are how? Write worse on purpose?