A midterm status report on your papers and the grading thereof:

Book reviews

I have finally finished grading the book reviews. (Wouldn't it be nice if every third week was a break week?) They were all quite good, and I hope that you can benefit from each other's work. I will get the papers back to you with some feedback early next week (March 23-...) after checking with the staff on how to do that. Meanwhile, I'll create a Forum in the Discussion Board where you can post your paper, preferably after making some corrections. Technical help for doing that is here. If you prefer, you can put the paper on your own web page and provide us with the link. Please note that whatever you upload to eCampus will disappear some time after the end of the semester. Making your papers public is not required, nor is reading everybody else's.

Position papers

The next round of papers will be treated slightly differently. I ask you to post your paper on eCampus right away (when you submit it to me), and to read and respond to the others. I will not scan and return the graded papers, for several reasons. The book review grading may give the misimpression that all I care about is typos and sentence structure. Subjective evaluations of the depth and competence of your remarks are hard to put into words. I think of the position paper, especially, as an exercise intended to provoke thought, rather than to prove competence. It will get a grade (probably very high) and, if appropriate, some comments.

Term papers

I hope to give more critical attention to the final papers, but in view of the time pressure on all of us near the end of the semester, let's again put them on the web right away, without waiting for me to read them. The course eCampus site will remain in operation till some time during the summer, so you can come back and read other students' papers somewhat at your leisure.