• Attendance:  Timely participation in discussion groups, email, tests, and writing assignments is the same thing as attendance.
• Formats:  Submit your finished essays to Blackboard.ulm.edu Digital Dropbox using MS Word or Corel formats.  Do not use MicroSoft WORKS. 
• Time Spent:  The three hours normally spent in a resident classroom become on-line activities.  This means that you will spend approximately the same amount of time attending to this class as you are expected to spend for a resident class.  In other words, you will spend the three hours normally spent sitting in lecture reading and participating in class activities plus the normal expectations of classes -- 2 hours for every hour in class -- a total of 8-9 hours a week spent working on this class.  This is the standard formula for all college classes.
• Teacher's schedules:
  • Students can expect about a 24-72 hour turn return on emails.  Not all emails will be answered especially if the question can easily be answered by reference to previous emails or by looking on the Internet and Blackboard.
  • Teacher is not on email 24/7.  After 5 o'clock in the evening during the work week, email will not be answered.  On weekends, teacher will usually spend a period responding to emails.  If teacher takes a short email holiday for conference visits, etc. he will inform the class before hand.
  • You can find teacher's weekly resident schedule by going to <http://www.ulm.edu/~eller/eschedule.htm>
• Late Fees:  Writing will be accepted late.  The rule is that if Eller has not finished evaluating all the assignments in one group received, then you can submit without penalty to digital dropbox.  However, if Eller has finished evaluating all assignments in that assignment group and you turn it in there will be a 10% deduction for each day late. 
• Submitting Final Assignments:  All final writing assignments can be emailed to Eller in a readable file format [Click here for sending and file format requirements].
  • First time plagiarism or cheating of any kind, whether intended or "accidental," will fail a writing assignment or test.  Second time plagiarism will fail you in the course.

   

American Literature I 205 On-line Eller

A General Rubric for Evaluating all Writing -- Email, Discussion Board, Short Essay on Tests

Is the writing coherent; that is, does the writing have a central, focused, and clearly stated idea to which all the other parts refer and support?

Is the writing developed; that is, does the writing use relevant and specific detail (especially from our shared readings) to support several ideas related closely to the central and focused main idea?

Does the development of the essay include something new, a new idea or new information in support of the ideas being discussed; that is, is the writing fresh and original or a re-hash of old hat.

Is the writing free of serious grammar/mechanical errors and relatively free of careless, minor problems?

Is the writer careful to recognize the source of information; that is, does the writer use clear citations and lead-ins to quotes and paraphrases?