Philip Holden (email: ellhpj@nus.edu.sg)
Chitra Sankaran (email: ellcs@nus.edu.sg)
In EN3263, we will be making use of discussions on the NUS Integrated Virtual Learning Environment to expand the classroom learning experience, and to give you the chance to share your responses to readings and questions in order to prepare for class discussions.
We'll be having five discussion group meetings in the semester. You'll thus make five postings; each must be done the day before your discussion group meets, so that your tutor can review the postings and use them in class. When you post, you can either take off from the questions posed in the lectures or in the weekly "Readings and Preparatory Questions" pages of the website, or discuss an issue arising from the relevant lectures. You can also respond to a classmate's posting. If you make an initial posting before the module teaching commences (see the "Readings and Preparatory Questions" section of Week 1, you can miss one of the later posts.
1. Your ability to engage intellectually with the questions posed, the texts themselves, or ideas raised in class.
2. Your ability to relate your response (either explicitly or implicitly) to the ideas, perspectives, and approaches discussed in class.
3. The evidence you use to support any position you take.
4. Your ability to communicate clearly and engage in active dialogue with the others, including the quality of your criticism and response to criticism from others where appropriate.
1. Try to address your comments to a community of classmates, rather than to your lecturers exclusively. Don't be overly conscious that you're being assessed: aim for an informal but engaged tone.
2. It's difficult to legislate the length of posts, but 100-200 words might be a good guideline for a substantive post making an argument. You should feel free to make additional short postings as part of a dialogue, but try for at least one substantial posting in the two-week cycle in which you express your views.
3. IVLE is fairly stable, but we've all heard horror stories of earth-shattering philosophical statements which remain frozen on a crashed computer just before they can be posted. If you are writing at length, it's best to compose in a word processing programme first, and then cut and paste into IVLE.
Last updated: 4 January, 2007