John Oliver - 11:20 length of video clip


Hello all,

My name is Joe Escobar and I am your instructor for HST203 United States History at Lane Community College. You are receiving this email because you have signed up for the course and you have wisely included your email address in your ExpressLane account information.

I've been a history instructor since 1989, and you will find that I enjoy teaching and working with students. I wanted to contact you in advance of our first class meeting on Tuesday with some information relevant to this particular course.

First, my HST203 sections are taught in a hybrid format. Of the 4 credit hours, three are in the traditional classroom each week, while one is to be completed online.  The "h" label in the LCC Class Schedule clearly denotes my two sections as being offered this way.  If you are unwilling or unable to complete a significant amount of coursework online, on a computer, connected to the internet, then I suggest you make other plans and drop this course.

Second, we will use Lane's Moodle software extensively to accomplish our work for this course. I have made the course visible, so you should be able to login to the site with your L# and first six digits/characters of your ExpressLane PIN. I hope that you do so before we meet on Tuesday. The site URL is:

http://classes.lanecc.edu

Once logged in, I hope you take the time to read and/or print a copy of the course syllabus before class, so you can come prepared with questions. Also, you should definitely check your internet connection and ability to watch some video material online.  I have posted a link to an 11 minute and 20 second video of a comedian who you should find interesting and relevant to the material we will be discussing during the first week of class.  If you have trouble watching the video or cannot watch it at all, again, or are unwilling to watch it from another computer, such as one in an open LCC computer lab, you should evaluate whether or not you should take this hybrid section of this history course.

Third, think about this. You are spending approximately $400 in tuition, fees, and textbooks to take this course, and most of you know nothing about this "Instructor Escobar, J" listed on the schedule of classes. If you fail to drop the course before the second week of class begins, you cannot received a full refund of your tuition. To help you decide if you are spending your money wisely, I have posted all of my evaluations, completed by my former students over the last several years. All comments, good and bad, have been included. Nothing has been censored. I would strongly advise that you take a look and see if you like what you discover about your instructor. That URL is:

https://teach.lanecc.edu/escobarj/evaluations

Finally, I wanted to let you know about the course textbook, in advance. The bookstore shows my textbook as $40 new and $30 used. I've seen used copies at Amazon.com used book vendors priced at $24, shipped to your door.  You have other options too, including buying an electronic version "eBook" for $21, or even individual chapters at a $2.49 each. See the link below, or the Syllabus in Moodle for textbook information. (This is a long URL... be sure to get it on one line in your browser):

http://www.ichapters.com/tl1/en/US/storefront/ichapters?cmd=catProductDetail&ISBN=9780495411017 

Well, that's all of the news I have for you now. I look forward to meeting you in person on Tuesday and working with you during the term.

Until then,

Joe Escobar
History Instructor
Lane Community College