Through electronic journals, we can respond, week by week, to readings and discussions, in a public forum accessible to the learning community as a whole. In so doing, we create an archive of ideas that serves both as an reference for class discussions and as a long-term resource for individual and group projects, and for portfolios. Electronic journals let you read and write twenty-four hours a day: you can post you comments at 3-00 am, if you like. Here are the logistics.
Each writer will post an original response of at least 400 words to each week's readings. We shall post writing prompts each week, which we hope will stimulate your ideas and indicate the level of engagement with ideas and concepts we want to see in an upper-level learning community. Include with your reading response one or two substantive questions which you would like to discuss in class. Remember to develop logical arguments and pinpoint specific examples to support your views on authors' ideas and arguments, both in agreement and in disagreement.
As you respond, feel free to could include references to work carried out in class meetings, other readings in the learning community, ideas from other learning communities or classes and your personal explorations of information in this digital age. Responses should be posted by the Monday preceding our Tuesday class meeting (we'll decide the exact time in class). That way, we can all read each other's ideas prior to class discussion on Tuesday.