Non Compos (Compass) Mentis/Group Work Space

You guys are an eager bunch. I see that some of you got into the "Journal Topic" in Compass called Student Reflective Posts. Let me explain how I'd like to use that space and also briefly discuss group work space for you.

First, a few of you mentioned that the Compass site says only 395 and not 396. I'm not sure why that is but if you can log in when you need to that is all you should worry about. I know who is in which and will track your work accordingly.

On occasion I will give written feedback about your posts that I can't do as a comment on your blog because it contains some assessment of your work, whether letter grade, numerical evaluation, or what have you. I'm not supposed to do that by email either - it's not secure. Compass is, so that is where that sort of communication will occur. We still have a few more weeks before any of that will happen. Sometime before then, no rush, you should log in once into that discussion topic. Once you do it will show up on my screen so I can post to you or make comments on something you post. Until then it is invisible to me.

Likewise I will do the same for group work and I'm making a journal topic for each team. Team members should see their own topic. Non-team members should not have access. So far I've made groups and discussion topics for Action (A) and Best (B). While each of you have your own team to look at, I've got the list of teams, which explains my first letter requirement on naming. You don't have do to anything on this score at present. I do see the team discussion topics after they are created.

Also, you don't have to check Compass for these messages. I will alert you in class and via announcements on this site that such messages are there for you. You should monitor this site regularly, not Compass.

Now let me switch to the matter of group work space. You don't have to do anything about this immediately, but when you do start doing written work in the team, you'll need a space both to archive team work in progress and to deliver drafts and final product to me. One option for that is to make a group blog. If you go that route, I leave it to you. There is also a course wiki. (If one brave soul wants to login and verify s/he can do that, I'd appreciate it. If you are the brave soul please let me know that it worked.) The wiki is (should be) set up for each of you to have read/write access while the rest of the world has read access. Your team can make a team page and then have children pages for the projects, or some other schema of your own choosing.