Matt, your assignment looks very good to me. And thanks for pointing out Liz's wonderful templates...

These courses look terrific, Matt, and I am quite intrigued by the interface for 467. Thanks for showing us.

I love the choose-your-own-adventure assignment - I particularly admire the way you ensure the students will need to do a fair bit of work, during which they can't help but learn a good deal, and yet condence their output to a manageable chunk of text plus a map - means you'll be able to assess it without killing yourself.

I'm assigning three 600 word essays / blog posts this semester - I haven't precisely written the assignments yet, but I'm going to try and make them as specific as this one :)

And I really like that you're actually having the students deal with that tired old "oh, like a choose-your-own-adventure" instead of merely having them say it!

Matt, the courses and new site looks great. I suppose this explains the nine-day gap between blog posts! People won't be able to get away with doing the usual preparation for class anymore, if you keep doing full-scale site launches to go along with that...

Thanks, everyone. Jill, note that the open-ended deadline means that they also won't be all coming in at once. Nick, Liz's courseware made it easy and I really have _no_ good excuse for not posting in so long ;-)

Not precisely helpful in your course prep, but there was recently a McSweeney's entry devoted to "The American Canon of CYOA." You can access it at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2004/1/14mccoy.html

Ryan... hah! I actually use a very similar multiple-choice format for reading quizzes, designed to separate the people who actually read the novel from those who can fake a classroom discussion after reading an online summary of the book's plot.