English 100 at Ashland

Your first major essay is due in a few days, so here are a few last-minute rules about submissions in our course: Papers are due at 11:59 PM. (I could not do 12:00 because computers cannot figure out whether 12:00 is noon or midnight.) If you miss that deadline, you can still submit, but the late penalty discussed in the syllabus applies. I have set the number of attempts to “infinite,” so if you upload a draft in the morning and have a better idea in the afternoon, just load the new one. The only one I will read is the most recent. I have disabled the option of typing the whole thing raw into the Blackboard drop box. (That causes trouble for both of us and does not allow you to show where your paragraphs are.) You will have to figure out how to type something in a word processing program and upload it. If you decide to use the “Share” button in Google Docs or MS Word Online, I ...

A little background Years ago, the in-class handwritten exam was standard in almost every college course. Across Ashland University, we are returning to that sort of assignment, and many other colleges are doing the same, to assess what students can do without ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or any other machine doing the writing. What do you know? That’s the question we are working on. Here is my advice for doing well on these tests. Before the test It’s always OK to ask beforehand what sort of test it will be. If you are asked to discuss course content (lectures, reading, and so forth), spend some time reviewing your notes. Bring your own pen and paper. Bring extras—pencil points break and pens run out of ink. If your instructor has special requirements (blue book, for example), be sure to bring the right stuff. A good night’s sleep will help a lot. You probably do not want to tank up on coffee. ...

Almost every bit of printed information in this course will come through the Blackboard Learning Management System (LMS). I assume you learned how to use it during orientation, but just in case you missed that part, here is a quick access guide. There are a lot of ways to get to the first entry point. Here is one that works. You are already in our blog, so go back to the home page and look in the upper left for the little three line thing ☰ (it is called a hamburger). Click that to open the sidebar and find Our English Course. Now click Blackboard Log-in . The username and password are the same ones you use for Ashland University email. If you cannot get in using these, your next step is to talk to the IT people in the library or Patterson Hall. Once you are in, you are faced with (unfortunately) a very confusing screen which has little to do with you. On the left, in the dark grey area, click Courses. Th...

The word “syllabus” is one of those specifically academic words (perhaps your first) that only means something in college. You did not have one in high school, though a good teacher had a lesson plan and probably a set of personal rules and regulations. I have intentionally made our syllabus very complete, probably more complete than the ones you will meet in other courses. This is because I assume you are new to the college game and I want to give you a good overview of the sort of requirements you must face. In a way, the syllabus is a legal contract between you (the student) and me (the representative of Ashland University). When a dispute comes up between me and a student, the first question my supervisor asks is “Was it in the syllabus?” If you have ever dealt with union contracts, a college syllabus will make more sense. A word about audience On your first pass through, you will notice a lot of jargon and technical language. This is because—surp...

I just received an email from Dr. Grady, the Director of Composition, with this paragraph. (I assume you already knew this material, but I am posting it here so we are all on the same page.) Please note if you have student-athletes in your classes that coaches and the athletics’ staff want to be alerted to any issues asap—the student-athletes are required to inform their professors of any sanctioned absences due to game participation. Student athletes are NOT permitted to miss class for practice, advising, or photos or other team-related events that are not directly related to scheduled games where they are playing. Normally you will get some kind of paperwork from your coach, telling you when the excused absences will occur. I want to see that. When this email refers to “any issues,” I take that to mean such things as being habitually late, missing deadlines for paper submission, getting lost in one’s phone, or dishone...

Here is the problem everyone faces when they enter college. For twelve years or so, you were in school and it all felt the same: you came in, sat there for several hours (maybe moving from one room to another), then you got to eat lunch, then went back to a classroom and sat there for a few more hours before they let you go home. If you messed up, you had to face the assistant principal and your parents. And some school districts were very poorly run—they truly did not care greatly about some things. If you could get through the day without committing a felony, that was a success in their eyes. Now, suddenly, you are in college, and all those rules have changed. First problem: It just doesn’t feel like school. You spend a lot less time sitting there. Fifteen credit hours is a pretty standard load for freshmen, which means that you might be in class only three or four hours per day. It is too easy to feel like the rest of the day is vacatio...

Every course at the university has a “Master Syllabus,” a document that governs the rules and regulations for that course in general (though individual instructors are free to introduce their own customizations). I have just received (at 3 PM today) revised copies for the Master Syllabi for our courses, but I do not know what (if any) changes I will be making to conform to the University standards. I suspect the changes will be very minimum, and probably will affect the number and kind of written assignments we will do. it’s Friday afternoon; I’m going on a bike ride. I'll spend Monday and Tuesday pulling things together and making changes so we will be ready to roll on the first day. A Google Change Google has changed the front page of the Blogger site, so you do not see the sidebar immediately. You can still get very complete information about our course by going to the home page, looking in the upper left corner, and clickin...

As I write this on August 20, the course plans and assignments are finalized. You can read them by going to Our English Course in the sidebar and clicking Course Content . (Blogger has changed things a bit, so you probably need to click the little three line thing ☰ in the upper left.) A word about the QE For a long time, English 100 had a very hard-edged requirement called the “Qualifying Essay” (QE), an in-class essay that you had to pass in order to pass the course. When we ran into Covid-19, a lot of things changed, and one of them was our class schedule. We were mainly meeting by Zoom online connections (that didn’t work too well), and one of the things that just did not fit was the QE requirement. Over the last few years, a lot has changed in higher education, and one big change is that a very large number of students now use Artificial Intelligence to write their papers. Here at Ashland, it has become too common for my...

Academic Integrity—plain old honesty—is a big deal at Ashland, and I will hit the topic several times as the semester begins. (You will probably get tired of hearing me talk about it.) At least two reasons are behind my focus on this topic. “My high school teachers didn’t care.” I hear this one all the time. I take it to mean one of three things: the student is lying to me, the high school teacher was a fool, or (probably the most likely) the public schools didn’t have a meaningful way to enforce the rules. None of these is a good sign. Ashland University might be a tremendous change for these students. The teachers and administrators really do care here, and we do not have any obligations to keep dishonest students. “No harm, no foul.” We probably inherited this one from athletics: if the referee didn’t see you do it and you didn’t actually injure the other guy, everything is OK. The peopl...

During this last month Look carefully at your class schedule. Mistakes happen, and you will find it much easier to correct them in the week or two before classes start. Do a campus walk-through. We are a small campus, but we are still big enough to be confusing. Some buildings are known by more than one name. (A great example is the building our class is in: commonly called Bixler, it’s on the campus map as “14 Bixler Hall; Center for the Humanities (CFHB),” and it shows up in your computer list as “Center for Humanities Bixler.”) Your Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule is different from your Tuesday-Thursday schedule. Walk both of them and actually find the rooms. Get an eye exam. Don’t laugh. At least one student in every section I teach sits in the back, squinting and struggling to see the board. If you need glasses, get them. Wear them. They don’t look weird. ...