ENGL 200 D: Reading Literature: Literature in the Marketplace

You’ll write a total of 8 blog posts over the course of the quarter. Two of those posts, you’ll revise and submit as a portfolio at the quarter’s end. Blogging comprises 25% of your final grade.

Blogging: Each week, I’ll ask you to make a post of 250-300 words on the class blog. While academic essay writing is often oriented towards advancing an argument, blog writing is often oriented towards being informative, or process-oriented – it’s an opportunity for you to work through an idea in draft form.
 
Sometimes, these posts will be in response to a specific question or set of instructions, other times, it will be your job to decide what to write about. Either way, your goals in writing posts should be to:
• Remain focused on a specific topic or question
• Present a balance of evidence and commentary, using quotations and citations
• Explain why your subject matter is important – why it matters to this class, and why it needs to be written about, and discussed.
 
Posting is not the end of the assignment. After posting you need to foster the discussion you are initiating. When people comment you need to give substantive responses. Try to engage everyone who comments in some fashion and try to use the comments to sustain a conversation you began at the end of your post.
 
Blog posts will always be due by Tuesday at 8 p.m., so that there is time to read them before Thursday’s class session. This includes your introductory blog for the first week.
 
In order to get credit for blog posts, you must tag them, using the following formula: Week 1: week1blog; Week 2: week2blog, etc. See the blog for an example.
 
Commenting: Each week, I’ll ask you to make at least one substantive comment (25 words minimum) on one of your classmates’ posts, by Wednesday at 8 p.m. Substantive means that you need to respond to the specific idea that the original poster introduced, and extend the discussion further. (While I encourage you to support your classmates, brief comments that say nothing more than “Great post!” will not be given credit.)

Each blogpost is due by 8:00 p.m on Tuesday night.
If you’re new to blogging, here are a couple of videos that may be useful to you.

How to post links on WordPress

How to add tags to WordPress posts (don’t worry about categories, which are also discussed.)

How to add images to WordPress posts

Your blogging assignment for this first week is to introduce yourself to the rest of the class, by answering the following questions:

1. Who are you?

2. What are you studying?

And two more questions. There is no right answer to these, but you should consider them practice for the critical thinking that you’ll be doing for the rest of the quarter, and answer them accordingly.

3. What is money?

4. What is the economy?

Remember to tag your post! (The tag is week1blog).

This blog is a community resource, meaning that we will create it as a community throughout the quarter.

You will create it through your weekly blog posts, but I’ll also post with online resources and announcements that will help you with your assignments. And if you have a question that you think will be relevant to the class as a whole, you should post it here, so that everyone can benefit.

At the bottom of this post, you can see the three tags I’ve marked it with — and at the righthand column of this page, you can see the tag cloud. Clicking on any tag brings up all the posts associated with it. Using tags is an important part of writing for this class, both so that you get credit for your writing, and so that you can use the tags to find the information you need.

Feel free to explore the website further: the course calendar will be up later today, as will a few more resources.