1
Overall, nice job on this first assignment.

2
Terrific first assignment.  Yours was one of the best ones in the class.

3
I have an uncle who served, but he won't say one word about it to me, so that was a reason for my own interest.

4 - XTR

Excellent analysis of the credibility of the speakers you've read in Part 1.  That was the most difficult part of this assignment, and your paper made a worthy attempt to deal with this complex subject, just as the one you are dealing with in Forum 1.

5- BRIEF

While your paper was "on topic", it was a bit too brief to constitute a weeks worth of work, addressing the reading and posed questions in an in-depth manner.  Be sure to ponder and elaborate in more detail on future assignments.

6- SP/GRA

As gently as I can, I want to remind you to check your grammar and spelling before you turn in your assignments in this fully online class.  Whereas the internet allows for communication filled with slang, abbreviations, lack of capitalization or punctuation (and I'm not saying your assignment suffered from ALL of these faults), the academic nature of this class requires a more formal form of writing.  Since we have no other basis to "know" each other, I can only "know" you from your written work and assign scores and grades accordingly.  

7- -TR

The weakest part of the assignment for you (it was for a majority of the other students as well) was the part on reliability and trustworthiness of the speakers. While "they were there", in some cases, this makes them "too close" to the conflict. As a result, they can only speak to a VERY small part of the larger war.  Was their small part the "exception" or the "norm"?  Finally, they can't all be equally believable.  For instance, the Vietnamese perspective comes from individuals who have been chosen by the communist government of Vietnam and "allowed" to speak with this Western writer named Appy.  In a country without freedom of speech, is the speech we read accurate?  And for that matter, just because we live in a country WITH freedom of speech, does it make that speech truthful?  

8- ANSWER

While you did complete the assignment on time, you failed to address the numerous questions that I posed in the prompt.  Be careful when reading the instructions in this online class and address everything asked.  On assignments, you only get a single attempt.  (You get a bit more opportunity to fully address the material, and add to your initial work, in the forums, like the one due this week.)

FEEDBACK

I very much want to provide you with valuable feedback on your work.  If my comments above are not clear, or you have more questions, please feel free to speak with me, either via Moodle messaging, office hours, or even a phone call.




The most difficult part of online classes, from my perspective, is giving valuable feedback to students in an efficient manner.  If I had to type up everything I had to say when reading your paper, the task would be