Welcome and Introductory Letter!

Welcome to the Women’s Studies, WST 3015, class blog.

This blog will be used by our class this semester to post Service Learning announcements and group projects, helpful links, and to post unit work. I designed this blog with you in mind—here you should be able to interact with classmates and engage in course material beyond our class sessions. It is also a great way to cut down on the large amounts of paper used in a classroom. With that in mind, your first class assignment is to create a blog, using ONLY blogger, and then to email me the URL. Keep in mind that this blog must be separate from your own personal blog and is to be used only for our WST 3015 class (anything you would be embarrassed to show your professor should not end up here—ie: this is not the place for pictures from your last party).

Once everyone has created their own blog and emailed me the URL, I'll post a list of links on this page so that we can easily find and read each other's pages and postings. In order to do this, we must first cover some rules of engagement and protocols for our blog. 


What Do I Expect of You?

Participation: These assignments are graded. Essentially, instead of turning in assignments, you will post the unit work to your blog. Beyond that, you are not required to organize service learning groups via this cite or post links, etc.—these are just here to help you.

Interaction - Got an opinion? Express it. Disagree with a proposed course convention? Speak up. One of the reasons you will post material online is so that you can see other students’ take on these issues. And yes, most of them are controversial!

Keep an Open Mind – Women’s Studies, as a discipline, asks you to challenge many of the “truths” you hold dear and to unpack many of the daily activities that gender you and make up who you are. Common responses to these challenges are to shut down, feel guilty, and to get mad, or to be hurt—these reactions are part of the process. We all come from different social locations and will respond to the material differently--this is ok! Just remember that if you don’t agree, and you won’t always (or ever), you must still engage with the material.

Academic Language--Don’t just use opinion! While experiential knowledge is crucial to theory in Women’s Studies, you must use the personal to link to larger systems. Ground your responses in the text, use outside resources, find and breakdown the flaw in the argument; but always respond using academic language.

Sense of Humor –Come on people, some of this stuff is funny! It is ok to laugh at something even if we are simultaneously analyzing it.

Spirit of Collaboration – Learn from each other, ask questions, and remember that sometimes it takes a village. With that being said, don’t expect that others will do your work for you. To collaborate does not mean to hand everything over to one leader; instead it requires that we learn, despite or because of difference, to work together to accomplish our goals.

What you can expect from me.

Answers - Good answers to all questions, even the hard ones. And, sometimes that means my answer is to send you to find the answer.

Posting and Discussion Protocols: Be considerate of others. It is important to be honest and to express yourself freely but being considerate of others online is just as important as in the classroom. Make every effort to be clear. Online communication lacks the nonverbal cues that fill in much of the meaning in face-to-face communication. If you want to send a message to me, email me instead of posting a comment to the blog.

Post your assignments to YOUR page and not to mine—your page should hold all of your work for the semester and mine should hold the prompts. Use the following conventions when composing a discussion posting: Be careful about "Subject" headings; use the subject suggested in your assignment. Create a new post for every assignment instead of posting to the first one, that way it is easy for everyone to find.

Avoid postings such as "I agree," "I don't know either," "who cares," or "ditto." They do not add to the discussion! Take up space and communicate when asked to respond to others. These “same here” style posts will not be counted for credit. Do not use all caps. This makes the message very hard to read and is considered "shouting." Check spelling, grammar, and punctuation. These count online. Try to avoid posting large blocks of text but when you must, break them into paragraphs and use a space between paragraphs.

Whew! Without further delay, your fist assignment is to create a blog using Blogger and write your first post. Here are the instructions:



1. Set up your blog: to do this, go to www.blogger.com and follow the on-screen directions for setting up a free blog. Please take some time to personalize your blog. This is a way for the class to get to know you, so feel free to include a photo (remember my comment about appropriate), links to other sites you enjoy, etc. Please make sure that your name (first/preferred name and last initial) is clear on your blog. I know that some/many of you already have a blog where you write posts; however, for the purposes of this course, you will need a separate blog that is focused on our course. You should feel free to provide a link to your other blog if you would like to share that with your classmates as well (as long as postings and pictures are Disney rated).



2. Write your first post: your first assignment is to write a letter of introduction about yourself. In addition to the basics—where you are from, what year you are at UCF, what major you are, etc—I want to know a few things related to your participation in this course. Here is a series of questions to think about as you write (you are not expected to answer all of these, of course; pick a few from the list that you would find beneficial to describe given your own history):

• 

Why are you interested in taking this women’s studies? If your answer is simply that it counts for a diversity requirement, then what would you like to get out of it?
 
• What types of activism do you do now? How do you feel about activism? Why? 
• 
What do you think feminism is? How is it different than women’s studies? 
• What do you think are the major difference between genders (if any)? 
• What are some of the ways gender influences your daily life? 
• Who has the greatest influence on your understanding of how men and women behave? What about those people who break these rules? 
• Why do you find gender important—or not—in your life?


The letter should be 500 (+/- 50).

This should go without saying, but please remember that all of your blog entries should be in paragraph form and use complete sentences.

3. Follow up: email me at meredith.tweed@ucf.edu with your blog address (http://____.blogspot.com), so that I can add it to the list on our course page. YOU MUST put your full name and WST 3015.001 in the subject line.