I like the idea of having a planning week instead of review. I agree that they would be a lot more helpful to plan things out than to look back at what we have already done. What was hard for me about getting things done early was not being able to do everything for the week at one time. I’m not sure how you match us up with people to write comments but it would be helpful to have them earlier even if that just means that they open on Sunday the week before they’re due.
I didn’t try the story planning option but it does sound like a good option for people who aren’t sure about what the best story route would be. By the end of reading the story, I usually had a pretty good idea of what I was going to write about. Starting off at the beginning of the semester I think that would have been a great help. On that note… I think that writing off of a story like most of the options we had from this semester would have been easier to start off with than trying to change a super short poem/ story.
I think making the story recording extra credit is a good idea. I wouldn’t personally do it because I am horrible at reading out loud but I think others would like it. I think the audio recordings would be especially helpful for students who commute. It would give them something productive to do in the car.
One of my professors did a lot of screencasts to show us how to navigate websites and teach the online portion of the class that way. It was helpful but a lot of the time they dragged on when he would repeat himself or go at a slower rate than we were accustomed to as millennials. That might have just been him though. I think the step-by-step screencasts would be very helpful and could be offered as extra credit or a part of the beginning of the class (or midway review).
I think that making themed reading units would be a great idea. Maybe if you wanted to try it you could offer both and see if people choose to go that route. I think love stories, tragedies, war, tricksters, life lessons, etc.
Maybe you could make a bunch of themes and then just let people choose which theme they wanted each week so that they had more freedom to explore the topics that they enjoy. This could help people who need inspiration for their projects. They could go to the themes and pick stories from a theme or even use that theme for their project.
