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Modern & Contemporary American Poetry
Al Filreis
This course is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, from Dickinson and Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult."
You may have noticed that some of the student essays submitted for Assignment 1 received a large number of comments compared to the rest of the class. This was due to a glitch in our system: essays that had been evaluated by the staff were also erroneously assigned to a disproportionately large number of peer reviewers. We have now fixed the problem, so you should feel free to resume peer grading with confidence. We apologize for the inconvenience and confusion caused, and hope that you're having fun in this class!
Sincerely,
The Coursera team
Dear FIX,
The Coursera folks have fixed the setting that was causing a great many evaluations of a dozen or so essays that the staff and I evaluated - a skewing of the distribution of evaluation assignments. From now on, all those who wrote essays will be asked to comment on FOUR essays that have not yet received comments. Once an essay receives at least one comment, it will be automatically copied (as they have been already) to the discussion forum. Currently 1/5th of those who wrote essays have already evaluated their four assigned essays. As the other 4/5ths go into the "writing assignments" module and write comments on their four assigned essays, we will see the rest of the essays in the forums. I and the ModPo TAs will try to make sure that everyone who wrote a paper will see that paper, with at least some comments, in the forum. We have all this week to do this. I urge that we do the following: 1) If you wrote an essay and have already commented on the four essays assigned to you within the "writing assignments" module, please go back and request one more essay to evaluate. When you are there it should be obvious what link to click. 2) If you wrote an essay and have not yet gone into the "writing assignments" module, please do. You'll see links to the four essays assigned to you for comment, and please do comment. Until you do, those essayists will not see their essays in the discussion forum. 3) If you did not write an essay - and for that matter even if you did - please look in the "Writing assignment 1" discussion forum, find essays that have had "2" comments (actually 1 - the essay itself plus one comment), and offer at least a brief additional comment. In other words, please treat the essays just as you would any contribution to our discussion forums: offer your response! I have been delighted by the excitement that has been generated by this first writing assignment and by our idealistic goal of mass response. Most ModPo people are taking the obligation of considered commentary very seriously. The only way this aspect of our course will work is if most ModPo people respond to each other. Thanks for your efforts on behalf of your fellow ModPo-ites - and your continued interest in what we're doing generally.
As ever,
Al
