ConfEreNCES
 

Three types of activities will appear in our weekly conferences.
 

• Activity Type 1 will require an informal essay response. This designation requires that each of you create an individual, original primary response to the assigned question in paragraph form.  As the title suggests, your language and tone may be conversational and informal. However, as the word essay indicates, these responses must contain more substance than a simple reaction. They must also show some kind of development in the main idea, e.g.,  general statements should be supported with examples or explanation.

• Activity type 2 will present a  discussion topic.  Unlike the informal essay response, discussion responses require that  you read what other class members have said and react to, build on, or add to their ideas. While there is no required length to these responses, your contribution should somehow add to the substance of the discussion.

• Activity type 3 will require the formal essay. These critical essays or papers require all of the traditional qualities of essay writing: e.g., coherence, unity and development. They will be individually graded and contribute directly to your final grade, as described in the syllabus. Although I may ask you to post a paper to a weekly conference so that your classmates may share in your observations, I will also need a copy in the Assignment Folder for the purposes of grading. Only assignments submitted to the Assignment Folder will be graded.

As far as participation in informal essay conferences is concerned, I expect each of you in the class to create an original response to the assigned question, after which you are encouraged to comment on or ask questions about the responses of your fellow students. In the discussion conferences, on the other hand, you will be expected to participate in more back-and-forth communication with classmates in various areas of the discussion thread. In these threads, you may be responding to the original question or the input of other participants as seems appropriate.

By using this structure I am not trying to discourage casual input in the essay threads, but distinguish between activities in which I am looking for the presentation of carefully developed ideas, polished prose and critical or analytical reflection and those where I want you to have a chance to "think on your feet" and develop your thoughts collaboratively with classmates. 

Another factor I have considered in the weekly conference structure is computer access and online time. With our conference set-up you can view all of the week's assignments at once using the "read all notes" function. If you print out or save this frame, you can study the assignments offline. You can then compose all of your responses offline. If you place your responses in a single document, you can load them onto WT in relatively little time using the cut-and-paste method. In the worst of week's you can use this method; in the best of weeks you can log on every day and COMMUNICATE.

After the conference closes, I will archive it by putting it on "read only" status. I will do this to ensure that our focus stays on present conversations and to limit the places where class members and I will have to look for new input. If you want to continue a discussion, you can do so in the "free space" topic areas that will appear in each weekly conference area or you can create a new Main Topic.

In the second phase of the course, everything will change.
For the most part, we will have workshops and ongoing discussions on the individual works, but more about that in Week 8!

**IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT WEEKLY DUE DATES**

Weekly conferences and study segments in Phase 1 will be uploaded on Sunday mornings by 1200 Central European Time (GMT + 1) and they will end 13 days later, on Saturday evenings at 2300 (GMT+1).

Unless I see that the conference is going off track or faltering in some way, I will usually wait until the middle or end of the first week to comment on the conference content. At the end of the second week, I will make final summary and/or additional individual comments as seems useful.  I will make individual comments at any time that I see an unusually interesting idea or perceive a problem in content.

Because conferences will be loaded on a weekly basis, but will be open for two weeks, the conference modules in Phase 1 will overlap.
 

The Midterm

The midterm will be a proctored exam on which you will be asked to write short essay responses to questions which directly relate to concepts and ideas introduced during the first 6 weeks of study. In most cases, you will have a choice of questions.

The fInAL
 

The final online exam will provide you with a choice of several questions on critical aspects of the works read during the course and/or discussing their experiences with critical approaches.