Discussion Board Personal Responses and Classmate Responses

You will be assigned to a discussion board group of 5-6 students.  In your Discussion Board, you will post three Personal Responses and six Classmate Responses over the course of the quarter.  The three Personal Responses will together count for 15% of your final course grade.  To receive credit for a Personal Response, you must also have submitted TWO classmate responses by the designated due dates.

Ideally, Personal Responses would be submitted prior to the class for which the reading was assigned, but I will accept them up to no later than 6 PM on Friday of the week when the work was assigned.  For each Personal Response, choose one of the primary works listed below as your subject.  The SUBJECT LINE for your Personal Response thread must include the TITLE OF THE PRIMARY WORK to which you are responding.

PERSONAL RESPONSE [="PR"] and CLASSMATE RESPONSE DUE DATES:

• PR 1 (ONE only, due in either WK 2 OR WK 3): if you write on Béroul, Thomas, Marie de France or "Tristan's Madness," your PR1 is due by 6 PM on Friday 4/9; if you write on Chrétien de Troyes's romance Cligés or Tom Donovan's film Lovespell, your PR1 is due by 6 PM on Friday 4/16.
• PR1 should be submitted as a thread in your group discussion board AND to the Digital Dropbox.  The file submitted to the Digital Dropbox should have the filename "[yourlastname]_PR1.doc."  Be sure to save the file as a .doc file (use the pull-down "save as" menu) rather than as a .docx file (which I cannot open from my home computer).

[NOTE:  to receive credit for PR 1, you must submit one wk. 2 classmate response (by 6 PM on Sun. 4/11) AND one wk. 3 classmate response (by 6 PM on Sun. 4/18).]
 
• PR 2 (ONE only, due in either WK 4 OR WK 5): if you write on pp. of 41-248 of Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan, your PR2 is due by 6 PM on Friday 4/23; if you write on the remaining portions of Gottfried's Tristan or on Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, your PR2 is due by 6 PM on Friday 4/30.
• PR2 should be submitted as a thread in your group discussion board AND to the Digital Dropbox.  The file submitted to the Digital Dropbox should have the filename "[yourlastname]_PR2.doc."  Be sure to save the file as a .doc file (use the pull-down "save as" menu) rather than as a .docx file (which I cannot open from my home computer).


[NOTE:  to receive credit for PR 2, you must submit one wk. 4 classmate response (by 6 PM on Sun. 4/25) AND one wk. 5 classmate response (by 6 PM on Sun. 5/2).]

•  PR 3 (ONE only, due at the end of WK 9) is a different TYPE of Personal Response assignment:  an introductory paragraph and an outline, focussing on a work read or viewed since the midterm exam, that could be developed into a longer essay.  For more detailed PR 3 GUIDELINES, click on the link at left.  Your PR3 is due by 6 PM on Friday 5/28.
• PR3 should be submitted as a thread in your group discussion board AND to the Digital Dropbox.  The file submitted to the Digital Dropbox should have the filename "[yourlastname]_PR3.doc."  Be sure to save the file as a .doc file (use the pull-down "save as" menu) rather than as a .docx file (which I cannot open from my home computer).


[NOTE:  to receive credit for PR 3, you must submit TWO classmate responses to PR3 discussion board posting (by 6 PM on Tuesday, 6/2).]

PERSONAL RESPONSE GUIDELINES:

In your Personal Responses you will describe and analyze the treatment of one character, relationship, object, episode, theme, motif, or event in one primary work assigned the week the Personal Response is submitted.  Explain how the handling of this specific character, relationship, object, episode, theme, motif, or event from the Tristan story helps us understand something interesting and significant about the work in which it appears.  While the primary focus of your analysis should be ONE of the specific literary works or films covered in class that week, you may also refer (briefly) to other works to explain how the motif is typically presented.  Your analysis should explain something interesting and significant about the way in which the author/director understands and/or (re)interprets the legend and its meaning.  As you consider potential topics, be aware that it's not enough simply to note the similarities and differences between the baseline story and the ways in which your chosen topic manifests itself in the author/work you are focussing on.  You also have to have something to say about the specific differences which you note.  Typically, you will briefly acknowledge the similarities between the baseline story and the specific work you are focussing on, before turning your attention to the differences, since it is these differences which will give you a key to help understand the work/author in question.

Each discussion board personal response should consist of at least three well-developed, edited, thoughtful paragraphs on a single well focussed topic.  These compact essays should be focused, highly structured (i.e. well organized), and supported by appropriately detailed textual evidence (i.e. you must CITE THE PRIMARY TEXT or allude to SPECIFIC SCENES, IMAGES AND DIALOGUE IN THE FILM to back up your ideas).  Your introductory paragraph should be very clear about what you are arguing (not just the topic you will consider).  Document textual support with a page number in parentheses immediately following the quotation; for the films, use the DVD scene numbers and titles.

Your 450-500 word personal response should engage the primary reading in a way that demonstrates you read the text (or watched the film) closely and have thought about the implications of choices made by the author or director.  Your personal response MUST include citation from the reading or film (include a parenthetical reference to the page or section and/or line numbers of the passage you are citing, or indicate scene or DVD "chapter" if you are citing from a film).  The following should provide some ideas about how to write a successful Personal Response:

• offer a close reading of a passage AND explain what it reveals about the author's intended purpose or the overall message of the text;
• consider a literary image or a theme in the text and discuss how it relates to the larger themes of the work;
• explain the significance of an allusion to another text we have read;
• compare/contrast the treatment of a theme, character, plot element, etc. with the way a similar theme, character etc. appeared in a previous reading AND explain what it reveals about the author's intended purpose or the overall message of the text;
• analyze an overarching theme or symbol in the text, providing specific textual references and giving your own insight into what the author is trying to accomplish;
• or find another way to provide more than merely a surface reading of a portion of the text.

Your personal response essays can be created using your normal word processor (so that you can use e.g. the spell check and grammar check functions), but they should then be cut and pasted into the Blackboard Discussion Board message screen rather than submitted as attachments. Note that formatting (underlining etc.) may not transfer from your Word Processor; use the formatting tabs in the Discussion Board to format your response.  You may not be able to modify your reponse once it is submitted, so proofread carefully!  Citations from the text should be documented parenthetically, using the page numbers (or LINE NUMBERS if they are printed in the text).  Do NOT quote secondary sources (e.g. text introductions or headnotes) for this assignment. Also, please note that you do not need to quote my online background readings or study guides; the information they contain is now "yours," and for the purpose of this assignment, you can mention it as relevant to your argument without specific documentation.

Each personal response is worth 10 points.   Excellent responses will earn 9-10 pts.  Strong responses (i.e. those which are solid and well written but perhaps on the short side or lacking in textual evidence) will typically earn 7-8 pts.  If you do a fair job at responding (your response may have too much summary and not enough explanation or analysis; or it may be too brief), you will earn no more than 5-6 points. If your response is weak (too brief, undeveloped, and/or carelessly thrown together) you will receive no more than 4 points. Responses that ramble without focus, that do not have a clear thesis, that DO NOT CITE THE MEDIEVAL TEXT, or that are posted after the due date, will not receive credit. Please contact me if you are unsure about the quality of your responses.   While only your personal responses (not your classmate responses) will factor into the written work component of your final course grade, remember that you will NOT RECEIVE CREDIT FOR YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSES UNLESS YOU HAVE ALSO SUBMITTED THE REQUIRED CLASSMATE RESPONSES.
 

CLASSMATE RESPONSE GUIDELINES:

By 6 PM on the Sunday following weeks 2, 3, 4, 5, you must have read through ALL responses posted by the other members of your discussion group during the previous week and post a response to at least one of your classmate's PR1 and PR2 postings.  By 6 PM on the Tuesday following week 9, you must post TWO classmate responses to two different PR3 Introductory Paragraph and Outline postings made by your fellow Discussion Board members.  All classmate responses should be at least one thoughtful and substantive paragraph in length (no less than 100 words), and should address both your classmate's ideas and the primary reading written on, WHICH YOU SHOULD QUOTE AT LEAST ONCE. You must post two classmate responses in order to receive credit for each of your Personal Responses.  (This means that if there is a week when no classmate posts a Personal Response to your Discussion Board, you will have to post two classmate response during the other week in the same two-week period in order to receive credit for your own Personal Response.)

Prior to posting a Classmate Response, read through ALL the personal responses posted on the week's reading by members of your discussion board group. If only one classmate posted a Personal Response, it is what you will reply to for your weekly Classmate Response.  If more than one classmate submitted a personal response, read through all of them, and choose the one you will be able to respond to most substantively and fruitfully.  (This will usually be the Personal Response which you find strongest / most interesting -- but it might also be one with which you disagree, provided that you do so RESPECTFULLY and that you back up your assertions with textual support.)

Remember: the best classmate responses are neither mean-spirited nor lazy ("I agree with everything s/he said"). It's not about criticizing your classmate's thoughts, nor is it about praising them.  The best classmate responses build on your classmate's ideas or offer another way of understanding the the issue/work which your classmate wrote about.  Be sure that you address BOTH your classmate's ideas AND your own thoughts about the text (which you should cite at least once).

Note:  Classmate Responses 1-4 are due by 6 PM the Sunday after personal responses were due; Classmate Responses 5-6 are die bu 6 PM on the Tuesday after the PR3 postings were due.  For the specific due dates, see above.

Your 6 classmate responses will factor into the participation component (rather than the written work component) of your final grade.  Please note however that you will NOT RECEIVE CREDIT FOR THE THREE PERSONAL RESPONSES UNLESS YOU HAVE ALSO SUBMITTED THE SIX REQUIRED CLASSMATE RESPONSES (i.e., for every TWO classmate responses, you will receive credit for ONE of your personal responses).  If at the end of the quarter you have not posted six classmate responses to your discussion board group, you will NOT receive credit for all of your personal responses.