Lecture

The first lecture gives the students an overview of the expectations and structure of the course. Dr. Shaw advises his students to become familiar with Christianity and the important events that took place during the 800 year period that we will be studying. By familiarizing ourselves with the background of this time period, we will better understand the literature. The outcomes of the course are listed in the syllabus such as being able to distinguish the writing styles of the different authors. Dr. Shaw emphasizes the importance of keeping up with the course work of the class and following the schedule of the class closely. It will be difficult to catch up once a student is behind. In my own experience, I have also noted the importance of staying on top of the work for distance education courses. I make a strong attempt to visit the Moodle site of my distant education courses on a daily basis. Doing this has helped me keep up with the course since it is easy to forget about online courses. Dr. Shaw explains that our attendance and class participation points will be earned through weekly summary blogs. Each week students will be expected to submit an essay that summarizes the main ideas of the lectures and can also include questions, personal observations and alternate theories. These weekly summaries make up 40 percent of the course grade. Therefore, it is important to complete these each week and submit a quality essay. The remainder of the course grade will be two exams which will each count as 15% and weekly quizzes which will consist of 30% of the course grade. The two tests will consist of a midterm and final exam. The quizzes will be due on Tuesday of each week and will come from the reading assignments. The weekly summary blogs will be due on Sundays of each week. Dr. Shaw mentions the books we will be reading in class and points out that students must be aggressive with their reading in order to understand the theories. Students should refer to the...