Student Handbook

STUDENT BEHAVIOR

Each student is expected to abide by the policies and rules set out in this handbook and in the syllabus for the particular course.. Any student who fails to do so may be expelled from the course and will receive no refund.

Any questions about the policies and rules should be taken to Director Jeanne Cavelos.

Students are expected to arrive on time for classes, to attend all classes, to complete all assigned work by the deadlines, and to behave in a professional and responsible manner, both in class and outside of it.

Assignments must comply with the length limits provided.

Once students post assignments to the class discussion group, they cannot be revised.

All assignments, unless otherwise noted, should be properly formatted as directed by the instructor.

All critiques should follow the guidelines established in the Critiquing Lesson, which students receive before the course begins, and in class.

Odyssey will be recording program sessions and taking screenshots for educational, promotional, advertising, and other purposes that support Odyssey’s mission.  By participating in a class, students are giving Odyssey permission to record their image and/or voice and grant Odyssey all rights to use these recordings or screenshots in any medium.

Class content, in any format, is for the individual student only. Such content includes handouts, assignments, emails, files, discussion posts, lectures, recordings of lectures, and the work of your fellow students. Class content may not be posted, copied, shared, or distributed. The copyright of class content belongs variously to the instructor, to Jeanne Cavelos, or to the Odyssey Writing Workshops.

Each student needs to join the Canvas group for the class. Students should set up notifications as directed when they sign up, so that they will receive all class communications and alerts in a timely manner. Students should also designate the Canvas Group email as an allowed sender, so messages will not be caught in the spam filter.

The class Canvas group is to be used solely to discuss class content with the instructor and classmates, post assignments, view assignments and handouts, receive class updates, and critique classmates’ assignments.

Because the focus at Odyssey is on helping you to learn and improve as much as possible in the limited time available, we ask students to refrain from using Canvas or any other method to send messages or emails to the whole class or to groups of classmates.

The Canvas group should not be used to ask the instructor individual questions, chat with classmates, argue with classmates, or flame classmates.

Students are expected to behave in a professional manner at all times on this group.

When the course is over, the Canvas group will remain available, so classmates can stay in touch with each other and encourage each other in their writing efforts. Graduates will also be invited to join two additional discussion groups: Odyssey Online Discussion, in which graduates of all online classes discuss writing, and Odyssey Online Critique, in which graduates exchange critiques. More information on special resources for graduates of Odyssey’s Online Classes can be found here.

Odyssey encourages an atmosphere focused on work, study, and writing. Email and other Internet activity tend to distract from this, so during the class term (the weeks during which the course is held), students are urged to minimize the time spent on email, blogging, social networking, computer games, and non-writing-related Web surfing

Because the classes are demanding and time is short, we ask that students refrain from sending out emails to the whole class. For the same reasons, we ask that students refrain from setting up email lists, email groups, social network groups, or any similar structure that facilitates and encourages electronic communication between multiple students in the class. If you have questions, problems, or a grievance, please contact the instructor or Director Jeanne Cavelos. If you have important information to convey, please give it to the instructor, and she will distribute it to the class. If you have jokes, save them until the class term is over. It’s hard enough to keep up with the workload without an inbox full of things that are not related to your writing.

Though we cannot prevent people from blogging during the class term, we strongly discourage it. Blogging takes time away from your class assignments. Blogging can also cause a lot of difficulty and hard feelings in the class, and we ask students to think very carefully, and follow these rules, before posting anything on the Internet during and after the class term.

• Critiques are meant only for those in the class and not for anyone else. It is not appropriate to describe what anyone said in a critique, or how anyone reacted to a critique. It is not appropriate to quote from a critique, nor to air personal grievances over a critique on the Internet. Critiques are valuable because students feel free to give their honest analysis of the work they critique. Violating the protected atmosphere of the critiques violates the trust of your classmates and can damage the honest evaluation of your work. If you have a problem with a critique, you should go to the instructor to resolve it, rather than vent uselessly to the world.

• Details of student stories or novels should not be posted on the Internet. You may have just come up with the only original idea left in the universe. You don’t want it plastered all over the Internet before you’ve had a chance to perfect and sell your story.

• It should go without saying, but posting derogatory descriptions of your fellow students or mocking their writing is unprofessional in the extreme. Just don’t.

Odyssey will not tolerate the harassment of any student or instructor on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability or other unlawful reason. Sexual harassment includes a wide range of behaviors from the actual coercion of sexual relations, to requests for sexual favors, unwelcome sexual advances, offensive comments, jokes, innuendoes, and other sexually oriented statements and unwelcome emphasizing of sexual identity, when such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s performance at work or in the classroom, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive environment in which to work, live or study. Sexual harassment may be indirect and even unintentional. If you believe you are being harassed, often a clear statement to the person engaging in the offensive behavior is all that is necessary to stop the behavior. You’re encouraged to make such a statement, but not required to do so. What you must do is report any harassment immediately to the instructor or to Director Jeanne Cavelos. If you don’t do anything about it, then it’s not going to get any better. So act immediately.If you are uncomfortable with someone’s behavior but unsure if it qualifies as harassment, please discuss the problem with the instructor or with Jeanne Cavelos.