Suggestions for Your Blogs

I have now received the web address for 21 students in the class (out of 24), and have read, evaluated and commented on the initial posts by the six students who have begun writing on the readings. These first few posts have been good starts, and demonstrate a few techniques that others should emulate.

First, focus! Rather than trying to make a few comments on the dozens of poems by Blake or William Wordsworth, pick a single poem and go into greater depth in your analysis of it. As a general guideline, say more about less in these posts.

Second, specify! Don’t rely on a generalization or summary of a text, but quote a particular passage and discuss it. When you put a passage in your own words, you already begin to change the meaning. The words the author chose contain the meaning, so pay attention to them.

Finally, find a way to engage with the text! The text comes alive for you when you connect it to something in your own experiences or observations, and your readers won’t know about the connection unless you share it. Blogs are by their nature a more personal genre for writing, so this sharing is entirely appropriate. Just be sure not to get so wrapped up in telling about your life that your don’t remember to connect that anecdote to the text. You need to bring your comments back to the readings.

I look forward to reading your posts! If you have not gotten started, be sure to begin as soon as possible so you can get your 20 posts completed before June 24th. Read the posts of your classmates, or of students from previous students, if you are not sure how to approach this assignment.

Corrections for Podcast #1

Five years ago, when I first piloted the online version of ENG 264, I recorded the podcasts that still provide the lecture component of the course. In the first podcast I introduce myself and share some details about myself, my family and the course. Over the years that information has become a bit outdated. Here are some revisions and corrections:

 

• I am now a full professor (not associate professor).
• I am no longer Director of the First Year Seminar program; I am now, however, the Director of the Writing Program of the College of Liberal Arts.
• My wife and I are now celebrating our 25th anniversary on Monday, May 31 (not our 20th anniversary). We will be going to Asheville, NC, but I will be back in time for our chat session on Thursday, June 2nd.
• My son Carlyle is now 20 (not 15) and my daughter Ellyson is now 17 (not 12).
• The band I play with performed at Lake Oconee (at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge) throughout January, February and March, but we do not have a current gig lined up in the near future.
• While ENG 264 is still a course that fulfills a general education requirement, it is no longer mandated for English majors; ENG 263 is the only required survey for those majors.
• I believe I have now taught ENG 264 around 30 times (not 21), and this will be the fifth summer I have taught the online version.
• My original envisioning of this Session 3 course is still partly correct: most of the reading and discussing of the the materials will take place during the time period of Session 1, but the research paper and comments are due midway through Session 2, not at the end.
• The other podcasts deal with the readings rather my personal life, and so should not require this sort of updating.

 

Back from Asheville

I am back from the trip to Asheville, NC my wife and I took for our 25th anniversary. We had a great time, and I highly recommend the city for good weather, great food and very interesting people and stores! I intentionally left my laptop at home for the trip, and since my return yesterday evening I have been working on getting caught up on reading and responding to posts on the class blogs. I last checked blogs around lunch time today, and because of an eye doctor’s appointment I did not get to read any arrivals later than that (my eyes were dilated by the doctor as part of the check up). I will start replying to newer posts tomorrow.

Introductions

Normally when I teach a course, I introduce myself on the first day and ask all my students to do the same. Here is the sort of introduction I give:

I was born in Charleston, SC and grew up in Winston-Salem, NC. I received my undergraduate degree from Davidson College and my M.A. and Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill. I taught at Emory University for a year as a visiting professor before coming to Mercer in 1992. I am a full professor in the Department of English, and served as Director of the First Year Seminar for five years, up until Spring 2009. I am currently serving as the new (and first) Director of the Writing Program in Mercer’s College of Liberal Arts. My wife and I have two children: a son, Carlyle, who is 20, and a daughter, Ellyson, who is 17. We also have a dog of uncertain origin (but perhaps a Irish wolfhound-terrier mix) named Katie, who is 12, and a cat who seems to be a Maine Coon named Cordie, who is not quite a year old. I play saxophone and love music, movies and food.

Please include a picture and background for yourself in your first blog post, so we can all get to know you!

Welcome to the Course

Welcome to the blog for my online English 264 course: Survey of English Literature, Romantics to Moderns. I have taught the course more than 30 times over my years at Mercer, but by far the majority of them in a traditional, face-to-face classroom setting. I taught my first online section in the summer of 2006. That experiment seemed successful enough to repeat, which I have done each subsequent summer. I look forward to offering the online course once again
this summer, 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 Blackboard 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.