Greetings

You've found the webpage for English 104 section 2, an online course for Summer 2006.  During this course in writing about literature, we'll have the privilege of reading and studying three renowned contemporary works.  All three books, in their own ways, are captivating, fun, and deeply significant.  We'll do some heavy thinking about how these texts work, but we'll also try to enjoy the books, and we'll take seriously our personal responses to them by asking ourselves why the texts bring out certain emotions or ideas in us.  Even when we don't enjoy the books (and perhaps especially then), we can learn about ourselves, and about literature, from how we interact with the plots, characters, images, and themes on their pages.

Just below this text box, you'll find links to the course syllabus and the course calendar, which are probably the two most important documents of this course.  In those documents, you'll find instructions on how to carry on with the work of the course.  After you've reviewed those, and asked me any questions that you have, you can turn to the Blackboard module, which we'll use, primarily, for the discussion boards that you'll find under your group page, for the reading quizzes you'll find under assignments, and for the gradebook.  You'll want to meet your discussion groups early on.  Here are the group assignments for the course:

Group one: Rebecca Allen, Lisa Withey, Sara Clark, Rebecca Walleser.

Group two: Joel Furry, Domanic Scardino, Randy Pretasky, Tina Janok, Bill Gander

Once you've reviewed the instructions in the syllabus and on the calendar, you can begin the course by 1) meeting your groupmates in the first discussion forum, and 2) taking the two preliminary quizzes in the assignments section of the Blackboard module.  These quizzes are designed to test your readiness for English 104.  As with all quizzes and assignments in the class, these quizzes are open book.  Please consult your St. Martin's Handbook or other writing handbook in answering the quiz questions.

After these quizzes and the first discussion board assignment, you'll begin the reading for the course.  Please read the "Course Texts and Active Reading" page and consult the course calendar to make sure you're keeping up.  Due dates for quizzes and new discussion board prompts are all listed on the calendar.

By the way: my name is Bill Stobb.  I'm a full-time English professor at Viterbo.  If you're interested in learning more about me and my work as a writer and teacher, you can look at my homepage:  http://www.viterbo.edu/perspgs/faculty/WStobb/Stobb.html.   This is the third time I've taught the online version of English 104.  It has gone well in the past, primarily because the students felt free to contact me with questions.  Please do get in touch with ANY questions that you have.  My email is westobb@viterbo.edu (that's probably the best way to reach me--I'm kind of an e-addict).  My office phone is (608) 796-3486, but I won't be there often during these summer months.