Assignment 3: Online Participation in Discussion Forums (10%) This assignment is worth 10 per cent of your Final Grade and has two parts, each requiring two postings to discussion forums. Assignment 3 relates to both poetry and drama (specifically, Shakespeare’s Othello). It is based on the material in the final units on poetry (3 and 4) and the introductory unit on drama and tragedy (5). If you have not already done so, please familiarize yourself with the discussion forums. Purpose of the Discussion Forums Assignment 3 is designed to encourage and develop student interaction and engagement with poetry and drama. Indeed, the discussion forums are the virtual classroom for ENGL 1011, providing an opportunity for the exchange and debate of ideas at the peer level. While your instructor will be monitoring each of the forums and posting comments from time to time, it is your participation that will ensure both the liveliness and the quality of the evolving group’s “classroom” experience. Please bear in mind, however, that given the built-in flexibility of due dates and the varying course completion rates of your fellow students, postings to discussion forums may be irregular. You may find yourself making all of your primary postings (your main or original contributions to the discussion forums) before you are able to make some of your secondary postings (your responses to the primary postings of fellow students). General Requirements for Online Postings to Discussion Forums While postings to the Literary Café are optional, postings to the two discussion forums for Units 3, 4, and 5 are required. There is one discussion forum for poetry and one discussion forum for drama. The requirements for each of the discussion forums are the same. To each forum—thus for each discussion topic—you must make at least two postings: your primary posting will consist of a single-paragraph response (in the range of 5–8 sentences) to the current topic, and your secondary posting will consist of a response to the primary posting of another student. Your mark for Assignment 3 will therefore be based on your primary and secondary postings to each of the two required discussion forums. Additional secondary postings are, of course, greatly encouraged, and you should feel free to monitor all of the discussion forums and offer any further comments and responses. Please note that you are able to compose and to edit your postings and responses to discussion forums offline before you send them. This will allow you to ensure that your major postings, especially, represent not only your best thinking but also your best expression and writing. This is important because when your instructor evaluates your Assignment 3 postings, sentence structure, grammar and mechanics will be taken into account. Part 1: Poetry Discussion (connected to Units 3 and 4) To do the research for your primary posting to the Poetry discussion, you will visit “Poetry 180,” a new Website from the American Library of Congress in Washington DC. “Poetry 180,” is the brainchild of former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, and it was designed initially by Collins as a way to introduce the pleasure of poetry into the lives of high school students. The site consists of 180 poems, personally selected by Collins from poems published in the U.S. in the previous year. The poems are meant to be read aloud (but not discussed) by a teacher, one every morning, for the whole school year. Collins believes that just by listening to a year’s worth of good poems, young ears will learn to appreciate the fusion of sound and feeling that makes reading or listening to a poem a pleasing and stimulating experience. All too often, says Collins, who has taught poetry at university for more than thirty years, students come into his Poetry 101 class thinking that what they have to do is tie a poem to a chair and “torture” a confession out of it. We hope that this process doesn’t sound too familiar, though we have probably all been guilty of it in our formal attempts to write about poetry. Step 1: As the first step in preparing your primary Poetry posting, please go to the Poetry 180 Web site and read “Introduction to Poetry,” by Billy Collins (retrieved from: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/001.html.) As you will see, Collins’ poem might well be subtitled “how not to torture a poem.” Step 2: Now you are ready to do your research and prepare your primary Poetry posting. Your task is to pick any one of the poems from Poetry 180 and “hold it to the light” until it shines for you. Then prepare a brief essay/posting (about 200 words or six to nine sentences) in which you introduce the poem to your fellow students, indicate its subject and what you take to be its theme. Describe what you saw when you “held it to the light.” You will want to focus on one particular aspect of the poem—or one stylistic device—to show how this conveys meaning. But remember, no torturing allowed! Include the poem at the start of the posting. (The poem is not included in your word limits.) Be sure your posting indicates the correct title, author, and paste and copy your “pick” into the beginning of your posting, so that others may read it easily. All of the poems are listed on the Library of Congress’ website Poetry 180 / A Poem a Day for American High Schools. (Retrieved from: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/p180-list.html.) Step 3: For your secondary posting, visit the site of a fellow student’s poetry “pick,” and add your own comments or feedback to those of the original posting. You may perform this part of the Poetry task after you have moved on to Unit 5, if you wish. Part 2: Drama Discussion (connected to Unit 5) Step 1: This part of Assignment 3 assumes you have read through Shakespeare’s Othello and the Unit 5 material. If you have not yet done this, you should do so now. Step 2: Your first task here is to prepare one primary posting to the Drama discussion of Shakespeare’s Othello. Choose ONE Study Question posed in the printed “Guide to Reading Othello, Unit 5” in the Course Units to answer in your posting. Your primary posting should consist of about 200 words or six to nine sentences. Step 3: Your final task here is to respond with a secondary posting to one of the primary postings of one of your fellow students in the drama section. Remember: To complete Assignment 3, you must make four postings in total, two to Poetry and two to Drama, with one primary and one secondary posting to each discussion. Once completed, submit all 4 posts in a single file to the submission area as your Assignment 3.
