Indian Epics Course Improvements

Planning Weeks
As a full-time working student, I feel like planning is a critical part of being able to successfully take on any amount of work under time constraints. I think for Week 2's planning, it could be really useful to have students look at important dates in their other classes and create an overall schedule for the semester that includes test dates, paper due dates, and any project or other important assignment due dates. I think this could also be combined with a tech tip to incorporate a calendar of the student's choice to plan out his or her semester (Canvas, Google, etc.). I'm not sure if you can embed a calendar on a blog, but I think another tech tip could include embedding this plan to the student's blog.


Story Planning
I completed some of the story planning posts this semester and I really enjoyed these posts. I have a hard time getting past the details of my writing, so writing stories can be very difficult under the various time constraints of the semester and working. I think it could be really useful if students utilized these posts to analyze their readings for the week, discuss what message they would like to convey with their story, and what elements they plan on using to accomplish that message.


Thematic Reading Units
I think this could be a great idea! It would be interesting to allow students a little bit of a choice with this option still, which I don't think would be too difficult because there are so many different themes in all of these readings. Here are a few themes/ways to organize the readings that I think could be useful:
Creation Stories
Love Stories
The Trimurti and Tridevi
Complicated Couples
(I think this option could allow students to pick one couple and follow the various complicated and intricate stories as the couple interacts throughout various lifetimes or in their nonhuman forms)
Dharma
Karma
Maya
(I could see Dharma, Karma, and Maya being combined, but I also think they're complex enough that they could be kept separate)
War Stories
Exploring Religious Traditions
(I started exploring the difference between Vaishnavism and Shaivism, although I know there are other branches of Hinduism that could also be considered)

Cause and Effect
I think it could be interesting to have students trace the causes and effects of certain events through the stories and try to identify the driving force behind those events, like dharma, karma, or maya. I was thinking this could be an interesting extra credit option or maybe an option for story planning.