Western Literature to Dante

Week 1: Getting our feet on the ground

Every class, please come ready to get involved and to get down to business. Today’s business is about finding our way around. You need to know where to go to find the bits and pieces that make up the course. We’ll talk about procedures you need to follow to get the best out of the course, about where to go to find your assignments (presumably you made it this far, but we’ll go over it again), and some useful things to know when you are starting out on this journey. In particular you want to know them now, rather than realizing halfway through the class that you should have been doing something that you haven’t been doing.

Procedural matters:

• Introduction to the methods of the course
  • Reading
  • Thinking
  • Discussion
  • Writing
• Course materials, class protocols, etc.
  • Readings (books, web readings, etc.)
  • This website: both the assignment pages and associated helps
  • The Scholars Online Chat (and why we use it)
  • The Moodle (forums and other tools)
  • The Parents’ Guide
  • Email
  • Exams
• Using the forums — when and how
• Communicating with me — also when and how
• How not to go crazy while completing this course
• Some assumptions about how we approach this material

Also, before we next meet:

Write a short description of yourself and post it in the general forum for this class. Tell us:

• What you prefer to be called, if that’s not obvious from your nick
• What kinds of things you like to do
• What kinds of things you like to read
• What you think might interest you in this course.

There are a half-dozen reasons I want to do this, but chief among them is that it will help everyone to get to know everyone else. It lowers the barriers to discussion.

If we get off to a good start, we should be able to hit the ground running next time. Prepare for a wild ride.