[Teaching_Composition] Teaching Comp--On line comp

[Donna Reiss]

Hi everybody,

I'm responding to a couple of recent posts about teaching online. 
I've been teaching online since the mid-1990s, and librarians have 
always been among the best resources and collaborators for 
discipline-and-course-specific e-concerns. After a decade, I've 
figured out a few tricks for handling correspondence that I think 
respects students and enables them to learn with/from each other as 
well as keeping my work more manageable.

Several colleagues and I are working together on teaching sophomore 
literature classes online. As part of that project, we have 
collaborated with one of Clemson's librarians, Camille Cooper, to 
develop tutorials for conducting literary research using the 
university databases.

 From here http://www.lib.clemson.edu/guides/eguides.htm scroll to 
Literature, where you'll see Finding Journal Articles Using the MLA 
International Bibliography and Finding Journal Articles Using 
Literature Resource Center. If I were still teaching writing, as I 
used to, I would work with librarians to develop similar guides for 
some of the databases and print resources most likely to be used by students.

As for being overwhelmed with email, I state clearly in my syllabus 
that all procedural issues should be posted to an area of our 
Blackboard site called the Cyberlounge. Here students can post news, 
questions, whatever is on their mind. Unsure about some aspects of an 
assignment? Ask at the Cyberlounge. Another student may answer first 
(or better!). I answer myself if no students do within a reasonable 
time. That way, everybody in class gets to see the benefit of asking 
questions and of answering each other, and I don't have to reiterate 
individually by email.

I do say it's ok to email me an alert when you've added something to 
the Cyberlounge but that I will respond there except for 
personal/private issues. I also like to followup with a brief note of 
appreciation (also at the Cyberlounge) when a student helps another, 
especially the first few weeks of the semester. My policies are 
linked from my Clemson homepage: http://www.clemson.edu/~dreiss.

Best,
Donna



~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Donna Reiss dreiss@wordsworth2.net
Department of English, Clemson University, dreiss@clemson.edu
http://www.clemson.edu/~dreiss
Professor Emeritus, English-Humanities, Tidewater Community College
WordsWorth2 Communications and Consulting http://wordsworth2.net
203 Grove Drive, Clemson, SC 29631-2310 ~^~ 864-654-2886
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~



~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Donna Reiss dreiss@wordsworth2.net
Department of English, Clemson University, dreiss@clemson.edu
http://www.clemson.edu/~dreiss
Professor Emeritus, English-Humanities, Tidewater Community College
WordsWorth2 Communications and Consulting http://wordsworth2.net
203 Grove Drive, Clemson, SC 29631-2310 ~^~ 864-654-2886
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~