principles = html`Conversation themes help students develop ongoing conversations and initiate branching conversations, inspiring variations on a theme. Prompts elicit prescribed responses to narrow questions, inspiring reiterations of a thesis. Prompts are issued on a metronomic cadence with weekly deadlines, while conversation themes are shared extemporaneously, sans deadlines. Communities with conversation themes are like jazz — structured, yet improvisational; directed, yet unscripted.

Fortunately, converting prompts to conversation themes is much easier than jazz! It's largely a matter of simple reframing and expectation resetting. If you preface any prompt with this brief paragraph, you'll be 80% of the way toward converting that prompt to a genuine conversation theme:

If you’re looking for ideas on what to talk about, feel free to address the conversational themes I’ve offered below. As always:

You can choose to create a post to start a new conversation on these themes, take part in a conversation someone else started, or create an entirely different conversation of your own (as long as it is relevant to the course).

The goal here is to have good course-relevant conversations and share articles and examples that are relevant to the course topic. You’re more likely to receive reactions, comments, and accolades if you do that.

You can discuss these and any other themes for as long as you find that conversation enriching and your contributions remain relevant to the course and your learning.