# Online Course Forum Policy

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Heritage Christian Online School (HCOS) uses online course forums as a tool to promote healthy discussion and critical thinking skills for our students. At their best, forums are opportunities to engage in healthy discussions with other students who may have different views from their own, promoting charitable dialogue among students with diverse opinions. Forums are used to discuss a variety of topics within different courses and ask for personal reflections and thoughts on the different ideas presented in the course content. Students are asked to engage thoughtfully and respectfully in their posts and replies to other students. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If posts or replies are deemed inappropriate, your teacher may remove the post. Reasons for removal may include posts which:</span>

- <span style="font-weight: 400;">are unrelated to the original question</span>
- <span style="font-weight: 400;">personally attack another student for their response</span>
- <span style="font-weight: 400;">contain offensive language or profanity</span>
- <span style="font-weight: 400;">discrimination based on race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexuality, abledness, social class, etc..</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The course teacher reserves the right to make the final decision on whether a post contains any of the above content and remove it from the forum.</span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">If your post is removed, your teacher will contact you privately to discuss options to resolve the assignment. These options may include an opportunity to rewrite your post or response, a private conversation between you and another student, or might result in a grade of zero for the current assignment. </span>

<span style="font-weight: 400;">For more information on forum posting and how to navigate conversation, </span>[<span style="font-weight: 400;">please see this video for helpful ideas for forum discussions.</span>](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-lb1EQRuRFOSWhKV0dKWkxVRmc/view?usp=sharing)