El Paso Community College Syllabus Part II Instructors Course Requirements

Spring 2012
I. Course Number and Instructor Information: Online British Literature II: English 2323, Crns 22080, 24064 Instructor: Ruth Pea Office and Tel: VV, A-1304; 915-831-2086 Email: Use Blackboard email. In case of emergency, use rpena29@epcc.edu Hours: My hours of availability are virtual hours. I may be reached by Blackboard email every day, and you will find that I am online most evenings (except weekends and Monday nights) after 7:00 p.m. In the event of an emergency, you may call my office to set up an appointment to meet if necessary. II. Texts and Materials: [You must purchase the required books for the course.] The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th Ed. Vol. 2, D-F. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. In addition to your textbook, there are supplemental online resources, study and discussion questions to which you will be referred in each unit of study. You are responsible for all reading assignments. **You must have good computer skills as well as adequate and consistent use of the Internet in order to participate in this course. If you do not, then you should enroll in an on-campus class. There are no exceptions to these requirements. III. Course Requirements: This course emphasizes literary interpretation and critical thinking. To be successful in this course, you cannot take any short-cuts. That is, you must be diligent in your readings. The course is paced to give you plenty of time to read, to digest the information, to answer study prompts given for every major reading assignment, and to respond to required discussion questions. Assessment: Your progress in the class will be measured by periodic graded discussions, quizzes and short writing assignments. All grades are equally weighted. See calendar below. Writing Assignments and Discussions: This is no longer a freshman English course, so do not ask me how long an essay or discussion response must be. Each writing assignment should be detailed, fully developed and supported with a sprinkling of pertinent direct quotations and specific examples from the work. Your written work should express a clear purpose, stance, and exhibit attention to audience. Do not forget to follow MLA Manuscript guidelines. [See MLA in A Writers Reference, 7th edition.] Support your opinions with direct quotations from the work you are discussing. Original thought, sophistication of expression, logic, sentence structure, spelling and grammar, etc., do count! All compositions, long or short, must follow Standard

English composition rules. Manuscript Format: For each test or essay, type your name, date and course number-section in the upper left-hand margin of the first page. Center the title of your work on the first line. Doublespace all pages, use 1 margins all around, Times New Roman, and a 12 pt. font. Saving Your Work: Work to be submitted for a grade must be saved as either Microsoft WORD documents, or as Rich Text Files to ensure that I can open them. If I cannot open your files, I cannot grade your work. Submitting Assignments: Submit all quizzes and writing assignments through the Blackboard Assignment Tool. Submit your graded discussion responses through the Discussion Tool only. Make-Ups: If you have any kind of emergency which will keep you from submitting your work on time, email me immediatelynot after the fact. An extension may or not be granted based on your emergency. Going out of town on vacation does not constitute an emergency. Semester Average: Quizzes, discussion grades, and writing assignments will be averaged together to comprise your course grade average. All grades have equal value. Grading Scale: A = 90-100 IV. Instructors Policies: Meeting Deadlines: Submit all of your work by the given due dates posted in the Graded Assignment Tool and in the Blackboard calendar. Attendance/Drops: Attendance is monitored by your submitted assignments and your contribution to posted discussion questions. You should know that Blackboard tracks each time you log on. If you have not logged on for one full week or if you have not submitted two graded assignments in a row, you are subject to being dropped from the course. If you stop pursuing the course objectives, it is ultimately your responsibility to fill out a DROP form at the Colleges registrars office before the Official Last Day to Withdraw With a W. Incompletes: An Incomplete might be granted to a student who has completed 90% of the coursework and who requests it at least two weeks before the end of the semester. The student must sign the official Incomplete form. Communication Standards: Because all communication is through Blackboard email and discussion, we must all observe the rules of engagement. Be courteous at all times. Speak your mind freely, but do it with manners and use Standard English language. This is an English course, so sentence structure, spelling and diction do matter, maybe not as much as in a graded assignment, but how you express yourself does matter! Do not use slang or coded cyberspace language, for example C-U. Communications with instructor: While I try to respond to your emailed questions or concerns as soon as possible, please give us at least 48 hours to respond before emailing the same question again. Furthermore, while I usually begin grading within a day after you have completed an assignment, please allow me one full week to grade before asking for your grade. Once your work is graded, it is automatically posted to the My Grades Tool. If you feel that your questions are not B = 80-89 C = 70-79 D = 60-69 F = 0-59

satisfactorily answered by Blackboard email, call me at 915-831-2086. Leave a message, a phone number and a time when you can be reached. Plagiarism is the appropriation, buying, receiving or just plain copying someone elses work and submitting it or incorporating it into your work as your own. If you cheat, the assignment will receive a zero. If the incident is serious enough to refer you to the Vice President of Student Affairs, your penalty may range from receiving an F for the course to suspension from the college. See Student Handbook. Collusion is the collaboration with another person in preparing your written work and submitting it as your own. V. Administrative Issues for an Online Course: Saving Your Work: You must write and save ALL of your work as either Microsoft WORD documents OR Rich Text Files (RTF). Other programs such as Notepad cannot be opened or downloaded. Do NOT use them. It is your responsibility to check each and every file to make sure it will open for me. If I cannot open it because it is saved in another format than the one I request, your work will not be graded. Submitting Your Work: Because this is an online course, you must submit all of your work through the Assignments Tool (found on your homepage). In the event of a technical problem, I might ask you to submit your work as a basic Blackboard email attachment; however, do not automatically submit your work as an email attachment without my permission. Failure to submit your work according to instructions will result in a ten point penalty for that assignment. Lectures: Because this is an online class, it is, of course, difficult to lecture; however, you will be provided with overviews, study guides and discussion questions for each major unit of study. Some overviews and/or lectures come from online sources. In addition, you are required to read the introductions to each unit in your textbook. Discussions and quizzes may include material from the introductions. Links: Provided links to Internet sources are intended to give you more in-depth information about the literature, the writers, and their times. Although they are for your use and information, I expect you to read them. VI. Calendar: Subject to change at instructors discretion.
Dates to Remember: First day of class for online classes January 17 Spring Break March 12-16 Last Day to Withdraw with a W April 13

Week 1: Introduction to the Course and to Unit 1, The Romantic Period (vol. D.) Read Introduction to The Romantic Period (vol. D, 1-25); William Blake (76-79); From Songs of Innocence (81-87); From Songs of Experience (87-97).

Week 2: Introduction to Robert Burns (129-131); Burns Poetry (131-147). Graded Discussion. Read The Revolution Controversy, and the Spirit of the Age (148-149); Thomas Paine and From The Rights of Man (163-167); Discussion: (See Discussion Tool) Week 3: Read the Introduction to William Wordsworth (243-245) and read We Are Seven (248-249); Lines Written in Early Spring (250); Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey (258-262). Discussion (Discussion Tool.) Samuel Taylor Coleridge (424-426); The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (430-446); Kubla Khan (446448); Lord Byron (607-611); Byron Poetry (611-616). Graded Discussion. Week 4: Percy Bysshe Shelley (741-744); Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (766-768); Ozymandias (768). Read about John Keats (878-880) then read his poems, La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad (899-900); Ode to a Nightingale (903-905); Ode on Melancholy (907-908). Week 5: Test over the Romantic Period. (See Assignments Tool). Read the Introduction to The Victorian Age (vol. E, 979-1001) Victorian Themes: Gender and Sexuality, Education; Doubt, Self Reflection and Romanticism Read about John Henry Cardinal Newman (1033-1035) and From The Idea of a University (1035-1042); John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1051-1060). Week 6: Writing assignment over Newman and Mill. Read about Elizabeth Barrett Browning (10771079) and her work, Aurora Leigh, Books 1 & 2 (1092-1104). Week 7: Read about Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1109-1112) and his poems; The Lady of Shalott (1114-1118); The Lotos Eaters (1119-1123). Class Discussion Week 8: Read about Elizabeth Gaskell, and read The Old Nurses Story (1221-1236). Read about Robert Browning and his poem, My Last Duchess (1248-1252; 1255-1256). Week 9: Read about John Ruskin and read his poem Of Queens Gardens (1587-88). Read about Harriet Martineau and From her Autobiography (1589-92). Graded Discussion Gender Issues. Week 10: Theme: Criticism of Victorian Values. Read about Oscar Wilde (1686-1687); and his play The Importance of Being Ernest (1698-1740). Discussion. Week 11: Introduction to Unit Three, The Twentieth Century and After (vol. F, 1827-1847) Twentieth Century Themes: Transition, Modernity, and Modernism Read about Thomas Hardy (1851-1852). Read On the Western Circuit (1852-1868) and Hap (1868). Work on and submit Worksheet on On the Western Circuit and Hap. To be graded. Due date TBA.

Week 12: Read about Joseph Conrad ((1885-1887) then read The Heart of Darkness (1890-1947). QUIZ. Week 13: Twentieth Century themes Transition, Modernity and Modernism, Contd. Read about D.H. Lawrence then read his short story The Horse Dealers Daughter. (2243-45; 2258-2269). Week 14: Themes: Culture, Language, and Identity. Read about Jean Rhys then read her short stories The Day They Burned the Books and Let Them Call It Jazz (2356-72). Read about Salman Rushdie (2852-2853) and his story, The Prophets Hair (2854-2863). Week 15: Test over D. H. Lawrence, Rhys, and Salman Rushdie. See Assignments Tool. End of Semester