Next Steps

Lynn,
I have enjoyed reading your posts in Blogger and hope you have had wonderful adventures with your grandchildren. How delightful that you can spend this vacation with them! I know working in this online environment has changed my lifestyle in wonderful ways, enabling me to spend time with my family. It really is perfect for me!
I thank you for you comments about the final I use for Children’s Literature. Of course, we would need to tweak it to make it relevant to our needs here, but I thought it might be useful.
I read about your working methods with great interest, because they so nearly match mine! It appears that we have similar philosophies for online courses, which is wonderful. I always post my entire collection of assignments before the semester begins. I see no advantage in keeping students guessing what they are signing up for. I ask that they don’t post to each discussion board before the “opening” date for each week, however. In the past I had some students posting early and others emailed me saying this practice always made them feel behind, even when they were not. I encourage student to look ahead, and work ahead if they want, but to do this work in a Word file for later posting. If a student is going to be away (say, on vacation in Florida!) I ask them to email the assignment to me before leaving, and I post it on the opening day for them. I encourage them to keep me posted about anything that will interfere with their participation on the discussion board. I also always add a Chat Room for casual conversations, and always use the Embedded Librarian option. Have you accessed that option for your classes? I have been collaborating with Ann Schroeder for a few years now and value the support she offers to me and my students. She is an invaluable resource when I assign any kind of research.
Since writing you that I had received three of the textbooks, I have not received any others. I have spent some time perusing these and agree with your assessment of the Jackman book. Although it is rather expensive at about $100, it does come with the supplemental materials and is very logically laid out. If you are happy with this book, let’s just go ahead and adopt it. There are 12 chapters, so it will be quite easy to fit it into the shorter summer semester, while still being excellent for the longer semesters if we do some expansion of concepts. If we do choose the Jackman book, there are a lot of hands-on activities for students to work on individually or in small groups (which is something I am trying to implement more often in my classes). I also like the Explorations section at the end of each chapter, which has great ideas for discussion questions.
I have been thinking about the Gender Issues course for several days. I had nearly made my mind up not to take it on because I don’t want to spread myself too thin. However, if you are keen to try it, I may change my mind. My only concern is that this Curriculum course will be brand new, and I don't want to short-change my other students by taking on yet another brand new venture. Please share your thoughts about teaching Gender Issues so I have more to ponder before deciding.
Let me know your thoughts on adopting the Jackman book, then I will ask a few more questions about how you like to plan courses.
Suzanne
802.922.0058