Participation (17.5%)

Class involvement means, first of all, coming to class. Secondly, it means coming to class prepared. This primarily means both having read the assigned text and having the day's reading out and ready to be marked. Thirdly, it means being an active participant in the classroom. Finally, participation includes attendance and engagement during Messina EH, Messina events (and post event discussions), and plenary lectures. Lack of participation in these areas will negatively affect your overall participation grade.

Class Notes Discussion (10%): To encourage you in the above three areas, we will collaboratively prepare for class using a common set of class notes, with reading/discussion notes. Student will be expected to read and interact with the class notes using the Hypothesis Annotation Tool.

A participatory grade is meant to motivate the goal of active engagement. Thus genuine and sincere engagement, rather meeting a certain threshold or quota is the goal. Those who engage in a sincere way will generally automatically find themselves fulfilling the requirements of participation. What if follows is a general rubric to help clarify expectations.

Meets expectations (10): student contributes around 2-3 substantial posts (at least 1 of which is a response to a "discussion block" and at least one of which is a reply to another student's post). (As a rule of thumb a "substantial" post is usually between 100-200 words.) In addition to posting, the student is adding links, responding to others, and asking clarifying questions. During our in person class the student will also be prepared and willing to provide summaries of class notes and previous asynchronous discussions.

Approaches expectations (8): student occasionally posts, perhaps just once per class; comments are short, rote, showing a lack of genuine engagement with material and peers.

Because I know everyone has busy weeks, I'll drop your lowest 6 days (out of around 22 possible contributing days).

Weekly Quizzes (5%): To give you just a little push to keep up with the readings, class attendance and plenary lectures, we will have short reading quizzes which are to be completed on Moodle prior to the assigned class. Quizzes may include content from the previous weeks reading, lectures, plenaries, or the upcoming class reading. Because I know everyone has busy weeks, I'll drop your lowest 2 quizzes.

Reading Guide (2.5%): In groups of 3, students will take turns preparing the "reading guide" for 5 strategic readings: Beowulf, Knight of the Cart, the Green Knight, and Purgatory 1-15 and 16-33

Papers (40%)

Paper 1 (20%) (5-6 pages)

Paper 2 (20%) (5-6 pages)

Exams (42.5%)

Mid Term Exam (20%)

Final Exam (22.5%)

Final Grade Distribution

93% A, 90% A-, 88% B+, 83% B, 80 B-, 78% C+, 73% C, 70% C-, 68% D+, 60% D

University Policies

Honor Code and Plagiarism: Students are expected to follow the university's honor code: "The Honor Code states that all students of the Loyola community have been equally entrusted by their peers to conduct themselves honestly on all academic assignments. Our goal is to foster a trusting atmosphere that is ideal for learning. In order to achieve this goal, every student must be actively committed to this pursuit and its responsibilities, and is therefore called to be active in the governing of the community’s standards. Thus, all students have the right, as well as the duty, to expect honest work from their colleagues. From this, we students will benefit and learn from the caring relationships that our community trustfully embodies. The students of this University understand that accepting collective and individual responsibility for the ethical welfare of their peers exemplifies a commitment to the community. Students who submit materials that are the products of their own mind demonstrate respect for themselves and the community in which they study. These students possess a strong sense of honor, reverence for truth, and a commitment to Jesuit education. Accordingly, students found violating the Honor Code will be reprimanded appropriately in the belief that they will, with the support of their peers, learn from the mistake. This Code not only requires students to understand the ideals of truth and personal care as the two strongest educational factors expressed in cura personalis, but also calls them to demonstrate a general concern for the welfare of their colleagues and for the University." See the honor code for further information. https://www.loyola.edu/academics/honor-code.

Title IX Loyola University Maryland is committed to a learning and working environment free from sexual and gender-based misconduct, including sexual harassment, sexual verbal abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, stalking, and sexual exploitation. Reports of such offenses are taken seriously, and Loyola encourages students experiencing sexual misconduct to report the incident in accordance with the University’s policy on Reporting Misconduct (PDF) (pages 36-37). Loyola is also committed to an environment free of other forms of harassment and discrimination. For information about policies and reporting resources, please visit harassment and discrimination policy (PDF).

Email Policy

Remember that while you have five teachers, I have more than 70 students. Thus, while I'm eager to connect with you, I can do this best by enforcing a few procedures.

For questions about the course, both content and procedure questions, please use our moodle help discussion board. Using this system will help ensure that I see and respond to your email. It will additionally ensure that others who have similar questions can also receive an answer. So, if you send me a direct email about course content and procedure, I will politely ask you to ask it again via our moodle "help" discussion board and I will be eager and glad to respond.

For other issues, I will be glad to discuss these with you. But I would ask that you use our office hours booking service and reserve a time slot to discuss it with me. We can generally always communicate better when we speak in person and this is an opportunity for me to get to know you better. This also helps me manage my time and provide you with the best response I can. So again, if you send me a direct email, I'll will be glad to discuss it with you, but I will often direct you to the booking system so that we can schedule a chance to talk about the issue.