We’re a few weeks into the fall semester now, and I’ve just finished hammering out my assignments for E 314L: “Banned Books” using lots of in-person feedback from my peers and my teaching mentor, along with tons of help from resources on the internet. While talking about assignments and syllabi over a hot beverage with friends and colleagues is my cup of tea, the online resources I used were absolutely indispensible for coming up with the specifics of my assignments.

As a student myself in Dr. Lester Faigley’s Visual Rhetoric class four years ago, we used Blackboard’s “Forum” feature to initiate online discussions about our readings while sitting in front of computers in the same classroom. I remember how invigorating it was to respond to my classmates’ posts as they wrote them. I also found that having a written record of my thoughts on the readings served as great review for when I wanted to refer to theories from these readings later in the course. In Dr.