How to join class

On December 16th, Carleton announced that course would move to online learning from January 10th until January 31st. The administration will then reevaluate, but past experience suggests that we might be online longer than expected. I am hoping that we might be able to have the introductory sessions virtually, and the game play in person .. but 🤷🏽‍♂️.

• We will start by running the class synchronously via Teams. Instructions for logging onto teams can be found here. Sign in as soon as possible to make sure it works for you (sometimes easy, other times takes a lot of work). We will meet (link here) on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11h30-13h00 on Teams.

• Readings are available via Perusall (sign in to have start reading)

Our course will be taught on campus in room 360 in Tory Building on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11h30-13h00. But our classes will be anything but a lecture course with the professor droning on. After introductory sessions, our class will simulate (through gameplay) the aristocratic world of sixth-century Frankish Gaul – which means you will become a king or queen, a Frankish warrior or Gallo-Roman aristocrat, a bishop, or abbot/abbess for a few hours each week. By inhabiting these characters, students will experience and thus learn about the complex dynamics of Merovingian power politics.

This course will require considerable involvement. Participation is an essential and major component of your grade, and (most) students will be expected to make at least one speech in front of class. You are expected to attend every class in person.

In order to facilitate communication outside of classtime, we will run aspects of the course via Slack (mostly in-game student communication). Given that it is possible that I (Marc, the professor) might have to self-isolate due to COVID-like symptoms (I have young children who tend to spread illness despite masking in school), we might have to irregularly use zoom. To be clear, the course is not being taught virtually, even though it may have some online components.