Reading the Blogs

Since my return from out of town I have been reading your blog, leaving comments and posting grades. I have been concentrating for the past few days on the postings by the students in Section 3W1, so as to have some grades posted before our chat session tonight. Although I am not caught up for everyone, I have been leaving some feedback for each of you who are actively posting. I will concentrate on the Section 3W2 blogs tomorrow.

Several of you have already posted half of the 20 required blogs (or more), while most of you have 3-5 postings. I am concerned, however, by the few students who have yet to post any. While I understand that one of the benefits of an online course is the ability to work at your own pace, I don't want you to procrastinate so much it will be impossible for you to succeed in the course. Also, I strongly suggest that you post some entries early enough to receive feedback on them, rather than just posting all of them at the end of the summer session on June 22. While most of you are on the right track, many would benefit from greater focus on fewer texts or authors, more specific support for your observations (in the form of quotations and analysis), and longer postings. Be sure to read over the guidelines in my previous post that discussed blogging for this course.

Your grades should show up in the WebCT page, in the Course Menu column under the heading Grades. You should only be able to see your own grades. Please let me know if you don't see any, or if you see anyone else's grades.

Out of town and away from the keyboard

I am leaving this afternoon to visit family in North Carolina for the weekend, and then to go to the beach in South Carolina. I will be back late in the evening on Wednesday, June 6. While I am away I will be away from email and the web, so I will be unable to answer any questions or comment on your blogs. When I return I intend to get caught up on your blogs and prepare for our next chat session at 9:00 on Thursday, June 7. I would like us to discuss the late Romantics (Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Hemans) and the first readings for the Victorians (up to Dickens, who is not in our anthology but available as an etext). Have a great weekend!

First Chats

As of last night we have had two chat sessions--one for each section. I realized after the first chat session that I had not considered the logistical difficulties of allowing members of the class to attend either chat session as their schedule allowed. As it turned out, members of section 3W2 who wanted to chat on Wednesday could not enter the 3W1 chat room. I met with a WebCT specialist Thursday morning and she resolved that problem by merging the two sections into the same WebCT shell. Although there are still two sections as far as Mercer's Registrar is concerned, it is now possible for students in either section to participate in chats on either Wednesday or Thursday. I apologize for any inconvenience or anxiety suffered Wednesday night! It will be especially important to have a merged class for the next two weeks; we will have only one chat session next week (on Wednesday, May 30) and only one the week after (on Thursday, June 7).

I thought the chat sessions this week went very well, and I am proud of how enthusiastically many who had never done online chat before participated in the discussions. I think these chats are an important way to build a sense of being in a class with other people.

The next goal I want to set is for each of you to begin posting on your blog with your observations and insights on the readings. You need to have a total of 20 blog entries (not including the one in which you introduce yourself). There are more than 20 authors we will read this summer, so you don't need to write about al of them. Pick your favorites, or perhaps some who made you the maddest or the most confused. There is no rule about what a blog post should be like, or how long it ought to be, but I would suggest the following guidelines:

• Assume that your reader has read the text, but that he doesn't have it memorized, so avoid plot summaries, but quote relevant passages and discuss them


• Say more about less; don't generalize about the readings as a whole, but go deeper and focus on specific poems and passages


• Blogs are personal statements of thoughts and beliefs, so you don't have to write in a formal style; on the other hand, typos and syntax errors distract the reader from following your ideas, so try to edit them out before posting


• Although a web page expands to fit whatever information it contains, and therefore has no limit on length, try to think of your blog postings as roughly a typed page or two in length. Avoid short, underdeveloped postings of a single paragraph


• Finally, you can add images and links to other web pages in your blog postings, so take advantage of those options!

I will read and comment on your blog postings, but in the interest of privacy I will not put a grade in my comments. Instead, once a week or so I will post grades on my gradebook and upload it to WebCT, where you will be able to see your grades (but no one else's). I look forward to seeing what you have to say about the Romantics!

Our class is under way

As of yesterday our class is under way! I realize that this is the first online course many of you have taken, and I expect a certain amount of confusion and anxiety. I will try to address a few issues I have heard about here.

It appears some of you received the wrong edition of our textbook, and have the first edition rather than the second edition of the Longman Anthology of British Literature, Compact Edition, Volume B. If you can return the first edition, I encourage you to do so and get the second edition. The page numbers are different, and there are some different authors and selections. It will certainly be easier to follow the passages I read in the podcasts if you have the correct edition. On the other hand, if you cannot return the version you bought I think you can probably make do, and I would hate to put you out for the money you paid for the textbook.

I have now received addresses form about half of you for your blogs, and I have been adding them to the class blog page on our website. If you have not set up your blog and emailed me your URL, please do so as soon as possible. I encourage you to visit some of the blogs of your classmates. I also encourage you to do what some of your classmates and I have already done, and put a picture of yourself on your blogsite (unless you feel uncomfortable doing so). I think it important in an online course to do what we can to establish the sorts of human contact and interaction taken for granted in a face to face course. With enough pictures we can get an approximation of a class, rather than a group of isolated individuals sitting at different times in front of computer screens and keyboards.

I also would like you to listen to the first podcast for the course. Note that I recorded this introduction to the course and to myself last year. While the information on the course will tend to correct, the personal information for me and my family is a year out of date. You can either subscribe to the podcasts via the Apple iTunes Store, or download them from our website.

Introductions

Welcome to the blog for my online English 264 course: Survey of English Literature, Romantics to Moderns. Although I have taught the course 24 times over my years at Mercer in a traditional, face-to-face classroom setting, I am still relatively new to teaching it (or any other course) online, having taught my first section last summer. That experiment seemed successful enough to repeat this summer. I look forward to this course, and I am glad you are part of it.

During this summer session, I will use the blog to convey information about the class and about the readings and assignments. I will also use it to suggest discussion questions you may wish to pursue in your own blog for this course.

That's right, you will be setting up and maintaining your own blog for this course, too! Let me reassure you that it is easy; there are instructions on our course's web site and WebCT page. On your blog you will analyze and discuss the readings. I also want you to read and comment on the blogs of your classmates. In this way I hope to emulate the classroom discussion that is a large part of the face-to-face English 264 course.