I had an idea, since this is a course devoted to Designing and Developing Online Courses, that perhaps instructors should leave open the possibility for students to input directions on an individual project or discussion board. If students were given the chance to take a bit of a lead off of their directions and write about topics relating to the main assignment, they may put in more effort. For example, one week I asked a series of questions during our live chat, and some of my students really enjoyed the discussion. They wanted to continue the discussion on the discussion board for that week, but their discussion didn't exactly line up with the questions they were supposed to be answering. So for that week, I gave them the option, to either continue where our chat discussion left off, or to discuss the assignment questions - many of them chose the live chat discussion questions, and they put more effort into researching and pushing further beyond discussing what we had set out initially to do. So, I thought I would bring that concept up in this thread. I think it touches on placing more responsibility on students who want to learn and explore their own ideas further, while showing them that you (their instructor) hope they are investing themselves in authorship. I look forward to any discussion on this idea.