What a busy first week we have all had! At the end of each week, I will put together some thoughts and feedback from the week before. I will send these as an email and post them in modules too. I really enjoyed watching all of your intro videos and encourage you all to do the same. We have a class from a variety of backgrounds, places, majors, and talents. I am soooo excited for what I will have the opportunity to learn from you all.

Honestly, I was very impressed by you all this week. Each of you managed the technology and assignments with little assistants. This has the makings of the most wonderful semester.

A few take-aways and reminders are below.

1. Remember to go back to the discussion board frequently and reengage your peers. Part of this assignment is to get to know one another and provide feedback and direction on assignments and ideas. So do not look at the discussion board as just an exercise, but rather an opportunity to engage with one another.
2. For the ethics assignment, the only one I would add to is prompt 3 about little research on a topic. In cases where little or no scholarly or trustworthy resources can be identified, it may be best to rethink your claim and topic.
4. Remember that since you are in a mediated public speaking class the video quality and angle you present from are very important, we will talk about these ideas in the next couple weeks as well! For the most part, this was a non-issue but always something I want to remind folds of.
5. You DO NOT need to do the summary and review assignments at the end of the e-book chapters. You are welcome to do so, but it is not a requirement for this course.
6. If you are unable to access the lecture videos, I would try a new browser. Panopto can be a bit touchy about what browsers it supports.

Coming Up: We are going to start moving forward on the first major speech assignment (an informative speech).. Please look ahead to week 7 and read the informative speech assignment because it will really help contextualize the reading and assignments in what you will be doing for the next major speech assignment. The speech you develop for this assignment will also be repurposed into a webinar at the conclusion of the semester so keep this in mind too. Spoiler--you also need to amass an audience to listen to your presentation, if that will be tricky we better start chatting now :)

Please read all your specific feedback on the papers and rubrics and let me know what questions you may have! Looking forward to week 2 and the hard work y'all will do!