For EL250, a four-step process that helps you prepare for a productive class discussion using the SHU weblog system.

Read the assigned text, react by posting an agenda item to your weblog, respond to 2-4 items posted by your peers, and reflect on the experience in a 200-word informal essay.

Your 200-word reflection should include a direct quotation from and several specific references to the assigned text. It should also refer to a specific statement made by at least one of your peers. (See “Reflection Paper” in the glossary.)

Bring a printout to class. (I might not always collect it, but I’d like you to be able to consult it if called upon.)

The Portfolio assignment will ask you to post on your weblog an expanded version of one of the agenda items (yours or a peer’s). If you put a little extra work into your reflection now, you’ll have less work to do later when you compile your portfolio.

The process of reading, reacting, responding, and reflecting is part of all critical thinking and writing. In our online community, we will practice, in an informal manner, the intellectual activity that goes into the production of a college-level research paper.

While your agenda items and lengthier reflections should be a little more formal, when you leave comments, don’t worry too much about typos or grammatical mistakes. Feel free to use :) and LOL if you like. —Dennis G. Jerz —RRRR (Read, React, Respond, Reflect) (Drama as Literature (EL 250))

Some students instantly “get” weblogs, but others don’t see what the big fuss is all about.

I resist assigning word counts and posting frequency, because nobody wants to read “forced blogging,” including myself.

This term, I am trying to specify more contact points, and separating the grades for “keeping up with the readings” and “posting thoughtful, well-digested reflections”.

I can’t make every student fall in love with blogging, but I can try to tie the practice more closely with the course’s educational objectives. We’ll see how it goes.