Welcome to English 11, Section 68

Derek Maus
Bingham 301
962-5481 (English Dept. office)
dmaus@email.unc.edu
http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/
English 11, Section 68
9:30-10:45 a.m. Fall 1997
Office: 405 Greenlaw Hall
Office Hours: 11:00-11:50 MW
3:00-3:50 TR

Link to Class Discussion Forum

Choose a section of the on-line syllabus

Discussion Forum guidelines
Class information
Class Roster
Useful class links

Discussion Forum Guidelines

Fifteen percent (almost one-sixth) of your grade is made up of discussion forum participation. Each of you will "co-host" the on-line discussion forum for a week (along with a classmate) during which you will be responsible for leading the class in suggesting topics for postings. Moreover, each of you will be required to post at least one relevant message a week to the forum in the weeks when you are not hosting (e.g.. "Hi. How are you?" is not relevant to improving writing). Meeting these simple requirements will assure you participation credit. Exceptional participation will earn exceptional credit here. Use this resource to its full potential. We will talk about this more once the semester gets moving.

The list of the "hosts" for the weeks ahead is posted below and you should get together with your partner for that week and make sure that you can work out a schedule to make sure that one or the other of you can check the forum and respond as necessary on a regular (at least once a day) basis.

The co-hosts will be responsible for posting a set of fairly open-ended questions related (I'll give some leeway here...if you can convince me that the topic is related to what we're doing in class, I won't step in to meddle) to the unit that we're on at the time. It is also up to the moderators to make sure that responses to the forum stay "on-topic" (that is, if you post a question about public speaking technique and someone leads the discussion off on academic writing, it is up to you to reorient the discussion onto the topic at hand)

Your weeks as "hosts" will run from Sunday night at midnight (or Monday morning at midnight depending on how you want to look at it) until the same time the next week. You should probably post your topics and questions for discussion as early as possible to give people time to think about them and make well-though-out responses. Do not wait until Saturday night to put up your questions and then tell me that "no one" participated. I don't expect you to be staying in on Saturday nights to talk on this forum, but I think a few minutes twice or three times a week is a reasonable demand. And who knows, you might even get to like this.

At the end of your week as host, you will be responsible for posting a short summary of the week's discussion on the forum, in which you will recap briefly what the main points made during the week were and what (if any) consensus the group came to on the questions you raised at the beginning of the week. This will be an important part of getting the full credit for the week in which you host the forum.

You will get five points credit for fulfilling the duties of the forum moderator for the week you are scheduled (illness, unless it involves a coma, does not excuse you, since you can do this assignment sitting in front of a computer) and one point for participating in the forum in each of the other ten weeks that you are not the moderator for a total of fifteen points, each of which is worth one percent of your final semester grade. They add up, folks.

As I said in class, I neither expect you to use this only for class purposes, nor do I discourage use of this forum for extracurricular activities. However, I do expect you to maintain a level of etiquette and propriety of language just like you would in the classroom. Remember, everyone can see what you write, so don't make a fool of yourself or anyone else.

Above all else...Enjoy this experience. It's a new way to talk to each other and to be able to use your classmates as a resource and to be a resource to them.

Moderators List

WeekModerators
Sep. 7-13Ryan Buckholtz
Richard Cunningham
Sep. 14-20Rhonda Crocker
Bryan Taubert
Sep. 21-27Jessi Hicks
Melanie Gaines
Sep. 28.-Oct. 4Meredith Williams
Kristin Martin
Oct. 5-Oct. 11Tanya Topolka
Kristin Freas
Oct. 12-18NONE--FALL BREAK
Oct. 19-25Ryan Leggette
Katie Bernuth
Oct. 26-Nov. 1Chevonne Eversley
Cari Ballard
Nov. 2-8Amy Hammond
Lisa McGinley
Nov. 9-15John Ugwuoke
Torrey Rieser
Nov. 16-22Sara Fitzgerald
Michelle Semmes
Nov. 23-29NONE--THANKSGIVING
Nov. 30-endMary Gulla
Debbie Bird

Class information sheet

What I will be grading...
Writing portfolio
Feeder assignments
Discussion Forum participation
Class participation (attendance + discussion)
60%
18% (6 x 3%)
15%
7%

Student E-mail address Group Number
Cari Ballard ballard2@email.unc.edu 4
Katie Bernuth bernuth@email.unc.edu 2
Debbie Bird dbird@email.unc.edu 3
Ryan Buckholtz ryanb@email.unc.edu 4
Rhonda Crocker crocker@email.unc.edu 1
Richard Cunningham cunningh@email.unc.edu 2
Chevonne Eversley eversley@aol.com 4
Sara Fitzgerald fitzgera@email.unc.edu 2
Kristin Freas freas@email.unc.edu 2
Melanie Gaines mdgaines@email.unc.edu 1
Mary Gulla MGulla@ibm.net 3
Amy Hammond ahammond@email.unc.edu 1
Jessi Hicks none yet 2
Ryan Leggette leggette@email.unc.edu 3
Kristin Martin khmartin@email.unc.edu 4
Lisa McGinley Lisa122579@aol.com 3
Torrey Rieser rieser@email.unc.edu 1
Michelle Semmes semmes@email.unc.edu 4
Bryan Taubert taubert@email.unc.edu 1
Tanya Topolka ttopolka@email.unc.edu 2
John Ugwuoke ugwuoke@email.unc.edu 1
Meredith Williams mert@email.unc.edu 3

Some links that might come in handy...

Self-guided tour through the WWW
Citation Exercises and Resources
The Writing Center On-Line
UNC Virtual Reference Desk
Guidelines for citation of electronic material
Britannica On-line
UNC Libraries
Research-It! (Check this out...)