Journal/Participation
Pedagogical research indicates that active participation aids your ability to learn and retain information. *Since this is an online course, your journal entry will be a way to interact with me on a regular basis.* You may have immediate questions too of course, for which you should email me directly.
The journal entry will not be graded, and so long as you write a couple of thoughtful things, you will get full score. If the entry is a dud, like copy and paste from somewhere, it will count as none. For writing an excellent entries, you will get extra credit, based on my discretion.
Keeping a journal is an important part of learning. I understand not all of you may find this easy, as it involves creating a new habit for some and putting your thoughts down. However, it is an extremely important tool that may stay with you the rest of your lives and make you a better thinker and writer. At minimum, you are required to make one entry per week (about 200 words) by the end of Sunday. Your journal entries are visible only to me, and at the end of the course, you can download them for your own records. The entries may include
your comments on the chapter you read or video clips you’ve watched,
your reading notes from the textbook, or
any non-urgent but relevant thoughts you may have that you want to remember.
Writing in perfect English and in complete sentences is not necessary-so those who feel that writing is hard for them don’t need to feel shy. I will grade simply the fact that you made a decent entry with some thought, not the quality of its language.