The course is designed to enhance your ability to read, interpret, discuss and write about some of the most significant texts in English and American culture. The readings, discussions, and activities in this course are designed to create a learning environment that emphasizes the development of critical thinking, the importance of understanding context, the process of engagement with other learners, and the facilitation of reflecting and acting on reading materials.
This class will explore the usefulness of cultural and historical relativism, a particular kind of critical thinking in which phenomena are analyzed in light of the social, cultural, and historical contexts. These readings will challenge our assumptions about how the world works and give us a greater appreciation for human and social diversity. You will learn to appreciate human social and cultural diversity over time and across space.
A series of activities during the course will encourage you to understand and apply the course material by interacting constructively with each other.
You will be expected to read each text thoroughly, take good notes, participate in discussions, and complete various writing assignments.
Course goals
Course structure
This course will be conducted online through distance learning by professor George Mitrevski from Auburn University in the United States. This outline will explain how you need to approach the various learning activities listed in the course schedule. It is assumed that you have already read the Student Guide to Moodle, the learning management system for this course, and are familiar with the procedures for logging in and accessing the various parts of the course.
The course is divided into topics and each topic is covered during one week. The learning activities for each topic include the following parts:
Literary Readings
All of the required readings are located online. You can read them on a computer, or you can print them out. It is preferable that you you print them out so that you can write your own notes. None of the readings are very lengthy, but you should read each work carefully and look up in a dictionary any unfamiliar words. Read the work with the reading questions at hand so that you know what to focus on.
Helpful resources
For each literary work I have compiled a short list of resources that should help you understand and interpret the literary work.
Lecture notes
The purpose of the lecture notes (PowerPoint presentations) is to provide you with a short review of the most important aspects of the readings.
Reading questions
The reading questions are your best guide to what will be included on the course exams. For that reason it's important that you are able to understand and answer each question concisely and in detail. You should print out each set of questions and write a good answer for each one. You should attempt to write your answers only after you have completed all of the assigned readings and other activities. IT IS NEVER A GOOD IDEA TO SIMPLY COPY ANSWERS FROM SOMEONE ELSE!
Assignments
You will have an assignment to complete and turn in at the end of each topic. Each assignment will include specific instructions about the topic and the length. The assignments count 20% of your course grade. You need to have a passign grade on the assignments in order to receive a passign grade for the course. You may not take the final exam, or write the final paper if you have not completed ALL of the assignments.
Unless you are directed otherwise, youi will need to upload all of your assignments in Moodle. At the top left corner of the assignment you should put your name, and below that you should put the assignment number. You should name your file like this: SurnameFirstnameAssignmentNumber. For example, for my assignment I would name the file MitrevskiGeorgeAssignment1 (without any spaces between the words). You should always spell check your assignments before you turn them in.
Since none of you are native speakers of English it is expected that you will make some grammatical errors in your assignments. You should know that in my grading of your assignments I focus more on the content than on the grammar, so your focus should be on the content as well.
Some of you will be very tempted to simply copy answers from a colleague or from some ouside resources. You should know that I come from a university where cheating and plagiarism is not tolerated, and I don't intend to tolarate it in this course. I always make an effor to check any answers that I think may have been plagiarized. If you turn in an assignment, or part of an assignment that is copied from somewhere else, you will not get any credit on it. And if this happens two times you will not be permitted to complete the course. In practice this means you will have wasted your money for this course, and you will have to wait another year to sign up for the same course.
Examinations
You will have a final exam at the end of the course. The questions on the exams will come almost exclusively from the reading questions and from the Assignments. For this reason it is very important that you read the assigned works carefuly and you provide complete and detailed answers to the reading questions.
Grades
Your grades in the course will be figured this way:
Assignments: 20% Final Exam: 40% Final Paper: 40%You must have a passign grade in each category (Assignments, Final Exam, Final Paper) in order to get a passing grade for the course!
Contacts:
Professor George Mitrevski, USA email: mitrevski@pelister.org Skype: george.mitrevski
You should feel free to contact me by email at any time and I will respond as soon as possible, usually the same day. Also feel free to ring me any time you see me logged in on Skype. All of our communication must be in English. I will not respond to any messages that are in Macedonian. If you are contacting me needing help you should explain in exact detail what the problem is. I can't respond to messages such as "I have a problem with Moodle.", or "Question number two is confusing.", or "I don't understand the poem ...". The more specific you are, the better I can help you. When you send me an email, please include a descriptive subject in the subject field. Don't leave it blank, and don't write something as simple as "Hello".
For additional assistance you can also contact the following:
Josif Petrovski, Pedagogical Faculty Assistant, responsible for helping with Moodle and accessing internet resources. email: josif.petrovski@yahoo.com
Bisera Kostadinovska, Pedagogical Faculty Assistant, responsible for helping with administrative matters. email: k_bisera@yahoo.com