LEADING A CLASS DISCUSSION: Each of you will lead a class discussion at some point during the term. I don't mean giving an oral report or preparing a lecture, but rather guiding the rest of us through a particular set of topics concerning the day's reading. One way to think of it is that you have to come up with good questions, but it's not your job to come up with good answers -- that's the job of the whole class. As part of leading a discussion, you'll be required at least 24 hours beforehand to post to the class message board a brief indication of what you want to focus the discussion on, and what issues we should be thinking about ahead of time. This can consist of a list of specific questions, or a list of "pages" in the *MT In His Times* website you want us to study (along with guidance about what we should be looking for), and so on.

The message board is something I'm trying out for the first time this semester, so we'll decide together how to make the best use of it. But as of now, I also plan to ask everyone to take turns posting responses to each discussion leader's message. Anyone can post a reply, but for each class with a student discussion leader two students must -- the two students whose names are alphabetically on either side of the leader's on our class list. These responses need to be posted at least 12 hours before class. In practical terms, this means everyone will write at least 4 message board posts during the semester -- once as the discussion leader, and twice as a designated responder, and once (see the next item) in response to other students' book reviews.

WRITTEN WORK: Two different kinds of assignments. First, a short (600-800 words) review of a book about Mark Twain, due Wednesday, October 11. You'll chose a text to review from this CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY -- you have until September 27 to pick the book you want to read and review, but as soon as you know you should post your claim to the book on the class message board. Your audience for the review will be the whole class. On October 11th you'll turn one copy in to me -- but I'll also post your review in this website, so everyone else can read it. To make that happen, on DATE you'll also e-mail me a copy of your review, marked up according to THIS MODEL. We'll talk more about all this later, but the last required step in this process will be to write brief reactions to at least two students' reviews, that will be posted on our class message board. None of your postings will be formally graded, though if any seem inadequate I'll let you know. The review, however, will get a grade.

The other graded assignment is a long (12-15 pages) essay, due Wednesday, December 6. We'll talk more about this too as the semester goes on. You can write on any aspect of Mark Twain's career, work or image that interests you. I'll keep encouraging you to get started as soon as you know what that is -- but you must also post your topic on the message board by November 1.

Some of you may prefer to create a web project instead of writing an essay. If you're interested in this alternative, let me know soon, and we can work together to define a good project and to make sure that you have or get the training in HTML markup language, &c., you'll need to produce the project. I'd love to be able to add more good student projects to the MT website, so I'll be happy to help anyone interested in trying this option. I'm always happy to read good essays too, however, so you should decide which final project is most intellectually attractive to you.