An important part of our study of the Camino de Santiago will be your participation in an electronic discussion list made up of members of the class. My hope in this is that it will allow a big part of your writing to be a response to the ideas of your peers and to ideas presented in class as an alternative to your writing in isolation on an assigned topic. Sometimes the topic of the electronic discussion will be dictated by the instructor; at other times, if the thread of the discussion is a productive one, the discussion will be allowed to develop and evolve on its own. I hope that this arrangement will allow us to continue and to develop discussions that begin in class. Since the Santiago mailing list is available to you 24 hours a day outside of class, you will be able to read the discussion and contribute to it at your leisure. There are, however, a few rules that apply to participation in the list:

1. Discussion on the list is to be conducted exclusively in Spanish, and your participation is part of the writing requirement for the course. Your submissions will be returned to you with corrections and comments on grammar and style. However, the emphasis here is not on polish but on our maintaining a spontaneous and productive dialogue. Your grade in this component will be based on your substantive contribution to the current discussion.

2. There is no limit to participation in the list, and I encourage you to use it as much as possible. Please note, however, that all class members are required to contribute at least the equivalent of one double-spaced typed page per week to the list. Failure to contribute the minimum will directly affect your writing grade in this course.

3. You may also use the list to ask questions to the instructor or to your fellow students about any aspect of the class, our discussions, and reading materials. The only limitations are that your questions and answers be in Spanish and that they be questions whose answer might benefit all or most of the class. Personal messages of any sort and messages of limited interest should be sent privately and not to the list.

4. When you send an original contribution to the list, include a subject header that indicates the content of your message. If you wish to add your thoughts on a topic that has already been established, please use the subject header that was used by the original sender.

5. In the mail program Eudora, which most of you use, hitting the reply button to respond to a message causes the entire text of the original message to be duplicated or "quoted" in your response. This is unnecessary and annoying. Please quote from other peoples messages only when it's necessary for stating your own opinion.