Diagnostic Essay: Before starting work in this course, you must complete a short writing assignment that will help the instructor understand your writing strengths and weaknesses. This can be done as soon as you enroll in the class. Visit the Testing Center in Student Services on the MECC campus (on the ground floor of Godwin Hall). Bring a pen and several sheets of paper with you. Ask for the English 115 Diagnostic Essay Assignment. It will take you about an hour to complete this short writing. Important: You must complete the Diagnostic Essay no later than the end of the first week of the course.

Note: Students from Southwest Virginia Community College and Virginia Highlands Community College should contact the EMT program coordinators on their campuses for information about how to take the diagnostic essay.

Communication with the Instructor: It is vital in an online course that you check your email every day and communicate with your instructor on a regular basis. Whenever you send an email to your instructor with an assignment or with a question, he will respond within 24 hours, even on weekends, indicating receipt of your email. If you do not hear from your instructor within 24 hours telling you that he got your assignment, assume that he did not get your email and resend the assignment or question.

Since your instructor teaches up to five classes per semester, it may take several days to a week for him to send assignments back to you. When your instructor returns an assignment, email back indicating that you received it. If you do not get an assignment back within a week from the time you sent it, ask your instructor about it.

Check Announcements Frequently: The instructor will use the announcements page in Blackboard to post important notices to the class. Login to Blackboard at least three times per week to check for new announcements.

Navigation in your Blackboard Course: In Step #4 of your Online Orientation, you learned some general information about how to navigate in a Blackboard course. Following is some specific information about the navigation buttons you will see in your Online English 115 course.

Announcements: The announcements button takes you to the main page of the Web course. This is where I will post important announcements for the class. Course Information: On the course information page, you will find folders containing important information, such as the syllabus and course schedule with due dates, that you will need to know for the course. Read everything in this section the first week of class so that you know what is expected of you in the course. Faculty Information: This page contains information about the course instructor, his office location and telephone number, and a link to his home page. Documents: This folder contains samples of the writing assignments for the course. Use these sample writings to help you get ideas for writing your assignments. Assignments: This is where you can find all your work for the course. The course is divided into 5 units. Whenever you see the folder symbol in Blackboard, click the link beside the folder to open it. Each unit folder contains A list of Textbook Readings and Lessons On-line Lessons Writing Assignments Communication: From this page you will be able to send e-mail to your instructor and classmates and join the class discussions on the Discussion Board. Discussion Board: This button is a quick link to class discussions. Web Sites: This page contains links to Web sites that you might find helpful in the course. Student Tools: From this page, you can enter personal information about yourself, check your grades, and find a manual about using Blackboard.

Using the Discussion Board: When you click on the link to a Discussion Forum in Blackboard, you will see a screen similar to the one on the right. Follow these steps to read messages and post your own messages. To make a posting to the forum, click on the Add New Thread button (if it is available). If it is not available, you will need to Respond to one of the posted messages. To read a posting, click on the link in the left column (do not click on the person's name). To reply to a posting, click on the Respond button that will appear with the message you are reading.