Informal notes analyzing/exploring key issues in the readings + at least one thoughtful response to a classmate’s post. When the schedule assigns reading posts, go to the class Discussion forum on Canvas and select the correct one—they are numbered. Your notes should offer a real engagement with the material that takes us into the text, offering quotes and page numbers, and posing questions and/or offering reflections on passages or ideas. IOW: get in there and engage the text—think, think, think. Your response to your classmates’s notes should be equally specific and thoughtful.
Your notes are to be posted by 8 pm Sunday Night when they are due on a Monday; by 8 pm Tuesday Night when they are due on a Wednesday–this gives everyone time to respond to a classmate’s post by class time. For full credit you must complete the notes on time. I’ll take 5% off for each day a set of notes is late.
Grade Scale:
- For a 5 (100%): You’ll not only follow the instructions exactly but wow us with your insight and demonstrate extra effort, citing several passages along with the correct page or paragraph numbers. Your notes, though informal, will be well-written and proofread, with few errors or typos.
- For a 4.5 (90%): You’ll post the notes on time, completing all the steps thoughtfully, demonstrating a good, strong, above average effort, citing passages along with the correct page or paragraph numbers. Your notes, though informal, will be well-written and proofread, with few errors or typos.
- For a 4 (80%): You’ll post the notes on time and complete most of the steps thoughtfully, demonstrating a slightly above average effort overall, citing some passages with page or paragraph numbers and perhaps summarizing without reflecting much or offering semi-obvious commentary. Your notes, though informal, will be well-written and proofread, with few errors or typos.
- For a 3.5 (70%): You’ll complete your notes and demonstrate an average effort overall, perhaps summarizing mechanically without much insight or thoughtfulness or bouncing out of the text to discuss something else too quickly, without really engaging the text itself, and/or perhaps failing to cite passages or to offer page or paragraph numbers. Your notes will be pretty well-written, with some errors or typos.
- For a 3 (60%): Your notes will be posted, but perhaps incompletely, demonstrating a below-average effort overall, mechanically summarizing without much insight or interest or else leaping out of the text to talk about tangential thoughts rather than engaging the material. Your notes may be sloppily written or unproofed, and it may fail to cite sources and/or page numbers.
- For a 2.5 (50%): You’ll offer a half-ass effort that looks like you coughed it up in a mad rush right before the class bell.
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