Announcements
Each week, I may post announcements for the class. There will basically be two kinds:
- Class business: Reminders for upcoming assignments, changes to due dates, corrections, and other announcements related to how the course works;
- Instructional material: clarifications, responses to issues that come up in student work, and other things to help you do your work.
Both kinds of announcements are important, so please check your announcements regularly. I recommend that you create a schedule for yourself — or, even better, consider setting up a “Notification” to inform you whenever an announcement appears (see below).
Notifications
If you haven’t yet done so, I recommend that you go to your Canvas Settings and set up Notifications in a way that works for you. You can set it up so Canvas notifies you when there’s a new announcement, as well as when I post feedback on an assignment, or someone responds to a message in the Discussion forum, and so on.
I’ll walk you through that process in a video in the first week of the course — though if you’d like to do that now, go to about 3:40 in this video.
Discussions
Throughout the semester, I will assign Discussion Group Assignments (DGAs) designed to help you to work through issues and ideas we bring up in class. I will also set up specific threads that focus on both general questions and specific assignments
It’s important that everyone feel comfortable participating in Discussions, so please: be respectful of your peers. You may disagree, at times, but please do so thoughtfully and politely, not with sarcasm or derogatory remarks directed at any person or group of persons. Please remember that there is a feeling human being on the other end of the computer connection.
Similarly, please don’t take criticism or advice personally. Love-fests don’t help anyone improve; honest suggestions do. When they’re right, we learn something new. But even when they’re wrong, we strengthen our own position by articulating why we think they’re wrong.
In short: strive both to give and to receive feedback, criticism, or advice with grace.
Canvas Messages and Personal Email
For class-related issues, please contact me through Canvas when you can; it’s much easier to keep track of conversations that way. For issues not related to the class, or in case you have trouble with Canvas (if you have trouble logging into Canvas, for example), you can go ahead and contact me through my personal email address (gkemble@yccd.edu).
I will respond within two business days (though I’m usually much quicker than that).
Dead Links
Every semester, I work to improve the course, which sometimes causes unintended glitches. If you find any “dead” links (or other mistakes—inconsistent due dates, typos, whatever), please let me know right away so that I can fix them.
I am also open to feedback, so if you have any suggestions for improvement to the course, or if you can identify areas that you found confusing or not intuitive, please feel free to let me know that as well.