English 505

So far, I've been pretty much going by the book with my class. Probably the biggest departure, if you want to call it that, from our syllabus that I have implemented is my method of taking attendance. Instead of quizzes or anything like that, I will have a discussion of the reading. Each student is required to have something interesting to say about the reading, and they all must say something, as that is how they are assuring me that they are in attendance, both in mind and body. A few of my colleagues have called this method into question, but so far it has worked really well.

I have worked very hard to make my website, http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~eplough/ a useful tool for my students. Probably the best feature of my website is the conference calendar. It was generated from Microsoft Outlook, which has an excellent "publish as website" feature that is as simple as it is useful.

Our group assignment, the T-Shirt advocacy project went very well this week. After discussing the matter with Phillip, I decided to use my quiz points toward this and future class projects. I used Erin's version of this project, which I found to be very effective.