Instructor
Name: Dr. Stephen doCarmo
Office: Penn Hall 131 (Newtown Campus)
Bricks-and-mortar office hours: MWF 12:00-1:00, 2:00-3:00 
Virtual office hours: By appointment via phone, e-mail, or in our Web CT chat room.
Phone: 215-968-8267
E-mail: Please use the e-mail function in our WebCT space!  Just click on "communications" on the homepage, then "email," then select my name, and a "compose" screen will pop up.
Bio:  I'm starting my third year of a full-time, tenure-track position at Bucks.  I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia (right near Washington, D.C.) and did my bachelor's and master's degrees at Radford University -- a state school in southwestern Virginia.  I did my doctorate in modern American literature, mass culture, and critical theory at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I still live.  Since finishing graduate school in January of 2000, I've taught part- and/or full time at Lehigh, Muhlenberg College, DeSales University, West Chester University, and now (of course) Bucks.  I've also taught at Radford, Moravian College, and in the adult-ed programs at DeSales and Muhlenberg.  When I'm not reading, teaching, or grading papers, I play guitar, sing, write articles, and try to publish my novel.

Required Texts
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.   
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway.
1984, by George Orwell.
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison.
Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe.
The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy.  

The correct editions of all these texts are available for you at MBS Books, Bucks' online bookstore.  They're also in the campus bookstore.

Course Description (from the BCCC catalog)
Introduction to the Novel is primarily a critical evaluation of the novel as a type of literature. The course explores the elements of the novel and examines its development from its early forms to modern forms.  (3 credits.)

Course Requirements
There are three major requirements for this course.  Here they are:

1.  You'll need to write three polished, non-researched essays, one for each of the three major units of our course.  These will be written in response to prompts I'll give you once the semester is underway -- but I can tell you now the prompts will require you to identify major themes in the works we'll be reading together and to assess those works' relations to both their times and the literary/artistic movements to which they belong.  The prompts will grow directly out of our "virtual" class discussions, so you'll be well prepared to deal with them when you get them.  They'll also be broad and interpretable enough to allow for your own sophisticated, individualized thinking -- which is what you'll have to demonstrate to earn high grades on these assignments.

The first essay is due before midterm, the second is due about five weeks after, and the third is due at the end of the semester.  Due dates are on the course schedule, which is accessible from our homepage. 

Though this isn't a writing class per se, all your essays should be thesis-driven.  They should demonstrate unity, coherence, good organization, good support, good sentence structure, plus proper punctuation, diction, and grammar.  You'll have time to work with me and/or official Bucks tutors on these essays before you submit them for grading.

I'll put written comments on your essays while grading them on an A-F scale, with +'s and -'s possible.  Then I'll return them to you via e-mail.

Topics for these essays will be accessible through the "essay topics" link on our homepage.  The dates on which they'll become available are also on our course schedule.

2.  You'll need to take nine weekly reading quizzes.  They'll be short, they'll be timed, and you'll take them on nine of the fourteen Mondays of the semester.  That means there will be five Mondays on which there is no quiz.  I won't tell you beforehand, though, whether or not there is going to be a quiz on any given Monday -- that means you've got to check in sometime each Monday to see if you do need to take one that day.  

Here's what you'll do:

(1)  Consult the course schedule (accessible from our homepage) to see what you need to get read before the upcoming Monday.
(2)  Sometime between 6:00 a.m. and 11:45 p.m. on Monday, log into our web space, click the "Monday Quizzes" icon on the homepage, and see if there's a quiz waiting there for you. 
(3)  If there's no quiz with that day's date on it, there's no quiz to take that day.  Hooray.
(4)  If there is a quiz with that day's date on it, click the link and go ahead and take it.

All quizzes will be multiple choice and will address only that week's assigned reading.  Quizzes will have ten questions, and you'll have ten minutes to get through them.  The questions will test your knowlege of important plot developments in -- and general subject matter from -- our readings.  They won't test you on abstract or subjective matters like theme or symbolism.  (In other words, a quiz question might ask you how a certain character dies at the end of a story; it won't ask what her death "means" within the work as a whole.  That's the sort of thing we'll sort out together in our discussions.)  

Since these quizzes are information driven, you need only read -- reasonably carefully -- to do well on them.

Each quiz you take will be graded on a 1-10 scale.  If you get a "10," you answered all the questions correctly; if you get a "9," you got nine right.  And so on.  At the end of the semester I'll average your nine quiz grades and convert them to a letter grade.  It'll work this way:

9.2-10 = A.  9.0-9.1 = A-.  8.7-8.9 = B+.  8.2-8.6 = B.  8.0-8.1 = B-.  7.7-7.9 = C+.  7.2-7.6 = C.  7.0-7.1 = C-.  6.7-6.9 = D+.  6.2-6.6 = D.  6.0-6.1 = D-.  Anything under a 6.0 is an F.

Your quiz scores will be posted for you on the "My Grades" page, accessible from the homepage.

3.  You'll need to participate in discussions of our readings.  Those discussions will take place online, on our Web CT discussion board, which you'll find via the "communications" link from the homepage.

Each Tuesday morning (the day after quiz day, right?), I'll post to the discussion board a few questions on the readings you did for that week.  You should, then, during the course of the following week, make at least three good postings of your own to the board on at least three different days.  Those postings should address my questions, but they should also reference and respond to your classmates' comments.  I'll also also join the conversation pretty frequently.

Think of a "posting" as somewhere between 200 and 300 words, or somewhere in the neighborhood of a one double-spaced page.  This is informal writing, though, so don't freak out.  You'll find more info about how to post when you get to the guidelines for our discussion board.  The link to them is waiting for you when you follow the "communications" link on our homepage -- and you should definitely read the guidelines before you leap in and start writing!

It's no big deal if, on occasion, you're not able to get three postings to the board on three different days in the week.  And I certainly won't mind if you want to contribute more than three postings some weeks, either.  An average, though, of three thoughtful and reasonably focused postings per week is what you'll need to pull down an "A" for this part of your final grade.  Averaging two good postings per week will earn you something like a C+; averaging one will get you something like a D. 

Final Grade Breakdown
Each of your three essays will be worth 20% of your final grade.
Your reading quizzes will (collectively) be worth 15%.
Your discussion participation will be worth 25%.

Course Accessories
You'll find, on our homepage, links to a number of important accessories for the course.  They include...

1.  Litr 275 Online Resources.  When you click this icon on our homepage, you'll come to a list of links to various web pages offering good information about authors and novels we're reading.  At no point will I require you to look at information from these resources; they're just there in case you dig a novel we're reading enough to want to some more info about it (or about the person who wrote it).  You just need to be careful not import language and/or ideas from these resources into your essays and discussion-board postings without giving credit where credit is due, okay?  More on that later. 

2.  E-Mail.  You'll find our course's e-mail function by following a link off of the "communications" icon on our homepage.  Use it to send e-mail either to me or other students in the class. 

3.  The Chat Room.  This is another way we can "talk" to each other.  It's always there and available, so...it's just a matter of our meeting at pre-arranged times, should we/you ever want to do it.  

There are something like five chat rooms available, you'll find, but to avoid confusion, let's use the one called "General Chat for Fall 2004 Litr275.59" should we ever decide we do want to get together that way.    

If you'd like to "talk" with me in a chat room, just let me know via e-mail so we can work out a meeting time; then (at the pre-arranged time) click the "communications" link on the homepage.  After that, click "Chat Room" on the next page you come to.  Then go into our course's "general chat" space.  Once you're there, we can type back and forth.  It's easy.  And in the event more than two of us are ever in there at a time, we can actually have a "group" discussion.

Since the chat room could become crowded at times, we need -- as with the discussion board -- a few guidelines to keep things orderly.  You'll find a link to those guidelines when you get to the chatroom.  Be sure to familiarize yourself with them before you leap in and start typing.

4. My Grades.  Click on this icon on the homepage and you'll see the grades you've earned on your reading quizzes.  Your essay grades you'll need to keep track of yourself, but they'll be clearly marked at the bottom of your essays as I return them to you via e-mail. 

5.  Bucks Student Services.  This link from the homepage provides a series of links to the distance learning office, the distance learning handbook, academic computing services, adult and multicultural services, the advising office, the bookstore, the tutoring center, the library, and other useful Bucks offices and services.

You can't make up missed reading quizzes!  If for any reason you won't be able to take a quiz on a Monday, please let me know beforehand so we can make other arrangements.

Skipping Assignments
Sorry, but you can't.  All of the writing assignments (the three essays, in other words) have to be submitted to me -- otherwise you can't receive a passing grade for the course.

Accessing Web CT
If ever BCCC's web site is down (it happens sometimes), that probably doesn't mean our Web CT course is unaccessible.  Web CT courses are on a completely different server!  So if you're in the habit of getting to our course by following the "distance learning" links on the Bucks pages, and one day the Bucks site isn't working, you're not out of luck.  Just enter this address into your browser:

http://webct.bucks.edu:8900

That will take you directly to the Web CT homepage, from which you can log into our course.

Tutoring
If you need help with a writing assignment for this course, please work either with me or with someone in the Tutoring Center (Library 121).

If you'd like to listen to the advice of a friend, family member, or classmate who's read a draft you're working on, that's fine -- great, even.  But nobody besides me or a Bucks tutor should be helping you actually write sentences for an essay for this course.  Please talk to me if you're confused about what constitutes too much help.

Special Needs
If you have any sort of documented learning problem that necessitates your having, say, extended deadlines for essays or extra time on reading quizzes, please contact me about it at the start of the semester.  

Plagiarism
This is from the College Catalogue:

The expectation at Bucks County Community College is that the principles of truth and honesty will be rigorously followed in all academic endeavors.  This assumes that all the work will be done by the person who purports to do the work without unauthorized aids.  In addition, when making use of language, information and some ideas not his or her own, whether quoting them directly or paraphrasing them in his or her own words, the student must attribute the source of the material in some standard form, such as naming the source in the text or offering a footnote.

I've been teaching writing and lit courses in college for twelve years.  And I've met very, very few students who weren't able to get through a course simply by doing their own work.  You don't need to cheat to get through English 275.  But you may need help.  I expect to give lots of it, as do the people in the Tutoring Center.  So please come put us to work.
 

Now that you've read our course format, please click the course schedule link on our homepage to find out what to read before your first (possible) Monday quiz!