I agree that the small talk on the list makes it very difficult to get to
the meat. I have three digests saved until I have the time to read through
them and print the good stuff. I've been getting two digests a day they are
so large.
How about open a second list called "Norse Discourse" for the small talk
related to the lessons and the idle chatter of the students and keep this
list specifically for the lessons themselves and the formal classroom talk?
you could open the list and just subscribe everyone on Norse Course to it.
Make it manditory. Egroups allows you to add people to a list. To cover
yourself, just write in the Norse Course description that anyone who joins
will automatically be joined to Norse Discourse, and have rules for each
list. Norse Course is for teacher-student conversation, and Norse Discourse
is a student-studyhall for Norse-Course. Whatever you choose to do.
I'd also like to see some sort of private grading of lessons, if possible,
and a test at the end of several sections encompassing what we have
learned. To save yourself time, you could post the answers and we could
self-grade the lessons at some point. Then it could also be an ongoing
course where people could enter at their own pace, as well as move at their
own pace through the lessons.
This list is a great idea and I appreciate you taking the time to teach us
something useful. Many thanks!
Wassail, William
"The eye for our antiquities often merely wants opening." Jakob Grimm