January 23, 2004

Spring Courses

Syllabi for my spring courses are now online. I’m teaching ENGL 467: Computer and Text for upper-level undergraduates and ENGL 668k: Introduction to Digital Studies for graduate students. The Computer and Text course, which is being served up with Liz Lawley’s spectacular MT Courseware, has been overhauled to include more of an emphasis on procedural texts, interactive narrative, and gaming. I’d particulary like to have some feedback on the Choose Your Own Adventure assignment.

The Digital Studies course will get a vanilla MT blog some time this weekend; there still may be a little nip and tuck on either syllabus.

Posted by mgk at January 23, 2004 08:03 PM
Comments

Matt, your assignment looks very good to me. And thanks for pointing out Liz's wonderful templates...

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at January 24, 2004 12:14 AM | Link to Comment

These courses look terrific, Matt, and I am quite intrigued by the interface for 467. Thanks for showing us.

Posted by: Ross Scaife at January 24, 2004 12:25 PM | Link to Comment

I love the choose-your-own-adventure assignment - I particularly admire the way you ensure the students will need to do a fair bit of work, during which they can't help but learn a good deal, and yet condence their output to a manageable chunk of text plus a map - means you'll be able to assess it without killing yourself.

I'm assigning three 600 word essays / blog posts this semester - I haven't precisely written the assignments yet, but I'm going to try and make them as specific as this one :)

And I really like that you're actually having the students deal with that tired old "oh, like a choose-your-own-adventure" instead of merely having them say it!

Posted by: Jill at January 24, 2004 04:50 PM | Link to Comment

Matt, the courses and new site looks great. I suppose this explains the nine-day gap between blog posts! People won't be able to get away with doing the usual preparation for class anymore, if you keep doing full-scale site launches to go along with that...

Posted by: nick at January 24, 2004 07:23 PM | Link to Comment

Thanks, everyone. Jill, note that the open-ended deadline means that they also won't be all coming in at once. Nick, Liz's courseware made it easy and I really have _no_ good excuse for not posting in so long ;-)

Posted by: MGK at January 25, 2004 05:13 PM | Link to Comment

Not precisely helpful in your course prep, but there was recently a McSweeney's entry devoted to "The American Canon of CYOA." You can access it at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2004/1/14mccoy.html

Posted by: Ryan at January 28, 2004 11:18 AM | Link to Comment

Ryan... hah! I actually use a very similar multiple-choice format for reading quizzes, designed to separate the people who actually read the novel from those who can fake a classroom discussion after reading an online summary of the book's plot.

Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at January 28, 2004 12:16 PM | Link to Comment
Due to the proliferation of comment spam, I've had to close comments on this entry. If you would like to leave comment, please send email to me at mgk =at= umd =dot= edu. Thank you.