Talk:World Literature 1, Spring 2020/Schedule
Course Update, March 24, 2020
Greetings, and welcome to education in the pandemic. I have made some significant updates to our schedule to allow us to safely continue our class online. Please read the following carefully, as I outline and explain all of my changes.
First off, please read this statement from Professor Brandon Bayne. Let’s try to keep these ideas in mind as we move forward.
I have tried to stick to some principles when updating the class:
- Keep meetings at a minimum—once a week;
- Use a variety of teaching/learning activities; and
- Practice consistency.
Our face-to-face meetings will now happen on Zoom (this link takes you to our virtual classroom). These days are indicated by a purple background on the schedule. Since the university does not have a license for Zoom, these meetings will be limited to 40 minutes. That should be OK; they will still help us touch base and get an overview of the week’s text. That means, however, you should be there on-time and ready to go. These meetings are mandatory; I will be taking attendance and counting tardies. Please set up your Zoom account well before our first meeting on 3/30. If you want to try it out, I will hold office hours later this week in my virtual office: Thursday, March 26, from 10a–12p. Stop in any time to say hello. It would be a good idea to practice!
Our online days (green background) will add a forum discussion of the work we’re covering that week. I added new software to facilitate these discussions, so use this week to open your account and get familiar with the interface. Be sure you go through the guided introductory tutorial when you first log in—necessary to unlock some features and to give you practice. Since I have to approve all new accounts, the sooner you take care of this, the better.
For these discussions, plan on a minimum of two posts per week, but the object here is to have a discussion about the literature. Always post in the World Literature category. Please read “Academic Forum Posts” to get an idea of how to use this software. Content-wise, you may discuss anything you’d like about the primary works—from characters, major themes, to textual analysis. Posts should always focus on one aspect of the text. If you have more to say, start a new topic. The best posts will incorporate secondary research on the literature: i.e., bring in secondary critical analysis to help all of us understand the play better. This is similar to what we did on the short lit-crit assignment.
That’s about all for now. I hope you all are safe and well. I thank you for being flexible and soldiering on—what choice do we have, right? Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Why not say hello in the lounge (once you can see it in the forum) and post questions that come up in the Help forum.
See you all soon!
