Saturday, November 19, 2011

For Credit: Thanksgiving Bonus Bloggery

C18 feast being authentically prepared at Colonial Williamsburg.
Because a number of people are still struggling to get their blog scores up, I'm adding an extra week of blogging over the Thanksgiving Break.

The catch is, I won't be posting any questions.  You will need to post the questions, in the same ways that you posted your required blog posts.

You can get up to five additional blog points for posting a question for your classmates, and up to three additional points for responding to a question.  You can only post two questions but you can respond to as many as you like.  The bonus week runs from midnight Saturday (11/19)  until midnight Saturday (11/26)--after which Week 14 blogging (on Vathek begins).

Some ground rules:

1.  Questions MUST require answers that are grounded in the reading.  So, for example, "Would you date Uncle Toby/Widow Wadman?" will get ZERO credit.   "Does Sterne mean for you to find Toby's final reaction to Widow Wadman unfortunate, or not?  What makes you think so?" is a credit-worthy question.

2.  Questions MUST ask for non-obvious, non-yes/no answers.  So, for example, "Is Uncle Toby a good guy?" will get zero credit.  "Sir Walter is clearly very different from Uncle Toby; in what ways does Sterne characterize Sir Walter morally?  Is he a good guy or a bad guy?  What makes you think so?" is more credit-worthy.

3.  Answers that essentially repeat or simply agree with a classmate's response will get zero credit, but you may respond to a single post more than once if the conversation develops in ways that give you more to say.

4.  Questions that cover material issues already addressed on the blog will get no credit (although questions that productively allude to or build on earlier conversations are credit-worthy).

5.  Questions that duplicate a classmate's question will get no credit.

6. Vathek is off limits, but you can blog about anything else covered in the course readings.

Enjoy, and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

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