I am reposting my Moodle announcement on 5 February, just in case you have missed it. Feel free to let me know your questions or opinion by commenting on this post. Alternatively, you can email me at [email protected].

Dear all,

May I enlist your support for a new way of running the tutorial? After yesterday’s experience, I felt strongly that a clear focus and a common direction were needed for a productive, truly interactive tutorial.

My original plan for the tutorial had two intentions. I wanted to give students as much freedom as possible, hence I did not want to prescribe and limit topics of discussion. Second, I wanted to make sure all individual blog writers get to share their ideas and have their ideas heard. A lot of you have good ideas, and since reading and commenting on the blog entries on COVE is optional, I wanted to ensure each blog writer gets a hearing. They deserve to be heard. However, this democratic way tended to lead discussion to all different directions. Also, it seemed to me that a series of presentations might be overwhelming and confusing to many of you. While I really want each blog writer’s voice to be heard and his/her ideas recognized, I realized that a series of presentations might take up more time than the tutorial could spare, leaving the rest of the class little time to respond and have their voices heard. I try to strike a balance here.   

To amend these, I enjoin you to experiment with me a new way of running the tutorial (starting from 25 Feb):

There will not be individual presentations. I will provide focus questions on Middlemarch, with a suggested passage taken from the novel through which students could think about these questions. These focus questions will be complementary to the lecture, and I will take into consideration common topics of interest displayed by each week’s blog entries. All you have to do, is to read the assigned reading for that week.

For each weeks’ blog writers:

You will not be making a presentation; instead, you will participate like the rest of the class by responding to the focus questions. You are encouraged to participate actively; you are welcomed to draw upon your blog entry ideas in responding to the focus questions, as you see fit. Under the new plan, your participation will not be a compulsory and guaranteed thing. Instead, I leave participation to your initiative.

For all of you:

I highly encourage you to respond to blog entries on COVE. There were great responses to some of the blog entries at yesterday’s tutorial. If only these were made on COVE! Again, I really want to give each week’s blog writers the time and recognition they deserve. But tutorial with its limited time is not the ideal place. I encourage this function to be performed on COVE.

I hope all this makes sense. I made these changes based on a belief and observation that a clear focus and a common direction are essential to a productive, interactive and insightful tutorial. Please let me know any questions you have regarding the new tutorial arrangements. You can feel free to let me know any opinion you have as well. I hope that you would accept my pardon for the failed experiment yesterday. I genuinely hope that the new plan will facilitate your learning, which is my first and foremost priority.

Anneliese