This course has a long history of being offered and developed by the Computer Science Department at Grinnell. This syllabus is based most closely on previous iterations offered by Dr. Jerod Weinman and Dr. Ursula Wolz.

Writing is habit of attention and practice of thought. I find it to be an invaluable tool for learning and creativity. For this reason, informal writing is a key component of engagement in this course. Part of this informal writing is blogging, reading, and commenting on others’ posts. These forms provide the opportunity to practice concise writing for an engaged audience.

Blog posts are 200-300 words, written for an audience of our class and posted in public.

At the start of the term, you will be assigned to blogging group A or B. These groups will alternate posting and commenting from week to week.

Blog posts are reflections on our discussion-focused class meetings: what struck you as fascinating, puzzling, or connected to other ideas? What questions do you now have? What do you want to know more about? Response posts are an opportunity to practice returning to an idea to develop it further. These posts should not summarize discussion. They should develop your own insight into the ideas we talked about. Posts are due by 5pm the Wednesday after discussion.

Comments should respond to a specific point raised by your colleague in the blog post. You do not need to comment on every post. You need one thoughtful comment to one post. If you see that some posts have several comments and others have none, consider commenting on a post that doesn’t have any yet. Comments are an opportunity to practice reading and writing as engaged conversation, and besides that, it is fun to know that other people are reading what you wrote. Comments are due by 5pm the Friday following the discussion.

Reading summaries are more than 300 words and convey the significance of the reading to which you were assigned. This should be in grammatically complete sentences for the most part, and direct quotation can be no more than 10% (i.e. 30 words). The title of the post should follow the format Author Last Name, Title of Reading. Due via blog post by 5pm Monday, categorized as “reading.” Must include a description of how labor was divided.