Hi everyone.

Thanks for your messages. If you haven't yet e-mailed me as I asked in my
first message, please do so by Friday. (Remember that all my class e-mails
are put on the course website
http://dennislearningcenter.osu.edu/epl259d-au05/index.htm under the Lecture
Notes and Attachments link for Rick's section. Anytime you have missed or
lost a class e-mail, you can go there to see it.

This is a long e-mail that includes information about how to do your work in
the course, as well as important instructions for your first two
assignments. Please read this e-mail carefully. It is your first of many
exercises in reading directions carefully and following them exactly.

GETTING STARTED

This course is about developing mastery as a student and in life. Developing
mastery means changing behaviors and that requires repetition. Just like in
sports, in which you do drills in order to build athletic mastery, in this
course you will be doing drills that build academic mastery. If, at times,
the course feels tedious, or repetitive, I hope you will regard that as an
opportunity to practice performing elegantly in the face of things that tick
you off.

By now, you should have gone to the course Home Page, read the "Opening
Remarks,'' and figured out how to navigate through the course website. You
need to locate the instructions for the Portfolios and Hope Papers, access
the computer modules found in the Course Sorcerer link in the Gradebook, and
take a look at the Discussions. E-mail me at mosholder.6@osu.edu with any
questions.

You should also be starting to read Module 1 in the Learning and Motivation
Strategies textbook and the first couple chapters of A Hope in the Unseen.
If you haven't bought books yet, Module 1(only) of Learning and Motivation
Strategies is on-line, and can be found from the link at the very top of the
course Calendar.

PORTFOLIO 1 and DISCUSSION 1

Portfolio 1 and LMS Discussion 1 are due next Wednesday, September 28, by 6
p.m. Due dates and times are firm in this course. Discussions are due when
specified, and no late entries are given credit. Portfolios and Hope papers
are accepted up to one hypothetical "class" late (our hypothetical classes
are Mon/Wed), with an automatic 7 point deduction (out of 30 total points).
I'll say more about this later.

All Portfolios and Hope papers should be sent to me as WORD documents,
attached to an e-mail to mosholder.6@osu.edu. Pleaase note that I DO NOT
HAVE THE SOFTWARE TO OPEN DOCUMENTS FROM OTHER WORD PROCESSING APPLICATIONS
like WordPerfect. Please also note that my home e-mail address will be on
some of my e-mails because I'll send them from there. Nonetheless, send them
to the osu address so I have them all in one place for grading purposes.
Always name your WORD documents with your last
name and the name of the assignment. For example, when Beth Reynolds submits
Portfolio 1, the name of her WORD document should be "ReynoldsPort1.doc". It
is important that you follow this naming convention; otherwise I risk losing
your work. There are 34 students in this class. Each of you will write up to
15 papers. Putting your last name first with the name of the assignment
second means I will have your papers in alphabetic order in the appropriate
folder. After the first two papers, I'll start deducting two points for
documents that are incorrectly named.

I will always acknowledge receiving your Portfolios and Hope papers with a
simple reply message that says "got it." My "got it" message is your
evidence that you submitted the paper. You should save these messages. If
you don't receive my "got it" message in 24 hours after submitting the
paper, please follow up with me.

Portfolio 1 is about choices. Please read the Grading Guidelines in the
Portfolio instructions and notice where the points come from for this paper.
You must distinguish the choices that you made that allowed you to become a
college student. You should use the word "choice" in your paper a number of
times. Remember that we often make choices without consciously realizing it.
You followed a certain path that led you to college, by making daily choices
that opened up the opportunity to attend a university rather than getting a
full time job or serving in the Army. Your paper must discuss these choices.
(Every quarter, some students write papers that say that they didn't have
any choices because their parents made them come to college, or that recount
their decision to come to OSU rather than attend some other school. These
papers are not about the choices that led you to attend college and thus do
not receive as much credit.

This course focuses on distinguishing all the choices that determine your
academic success, in order that you can structure your time and priorities
to make choices wisely and deliberately. Use Portfolio 1 as an opportunity
to think about the path that you chose to follow to get here, as well as
those paths that you could have followed, but, consciously or unconsciously,
chose not to follow.

For LMS Discussion 1, be sure to register before making a posting and
include your LAST NAME as part of the registration. If you post as a guest,
I cannot easily find your postings and you will not receive credit.
Additionally, you need to contribute two original posts and two responses to
the postings of other students in order to get full credit. Each of these
will earn you a point. Although you could probably answer the questions
asked in one posting, decide how to make two
postings if you want full credit. One paragraph postings of several
sentences each are sufficient. The discussions are pretty straightforward
and most people have experience with discussion boards. If you have
questions about how to do it, e-mail me.

E-MAIL MECHANICS

I will be sending you two e-mails a week, usually on Mondays and Wednesdays.
For those of you who use Webmail, remember that you will need to delete
e-mail messages and empty your trash regularly, and be sure you have gone
into your Mail Folder and checked the box beside the statement: "when
clearing trash also delete those messages on POP server
pop.service.ohio-state.edu" This will keep your mailbox from filling up and
rejecting messages.

Talk to you Monday. I'm looking forward to reading about the choices that
got you here.

Best,

Rick