Welcome | About this Course | A Self-paced Schedule | Readings | E-mail Responses | Your Personal Student Correspondent | Interacting with Walt Hecox as "Prof" | Critiquing this Virtual Course | Questions and Problems
You can use the topics page or the sidebar to the left to go directly to the modules. As a registered class member, you should bookmark this page as the course's home page.
Hello and welcome to Colorado College's first experiment with a Virtual Course on the World Wide Web for Alumni, Parents and Friends of CC. We appreciate your willingness to explore both the topic of this course and a new medium for reaching out from campus to our friends around the nation and abroad.
The title of the course: The Deficit, Debt, and Generation X, reflects much of the focus for our time spent together. To stimulate thinking and conversation (even if at a distance via E-mail) between today's young people and our alumni, parents and friends, we will use the general issue of intergenerational concern and conflict about the current entitlement programs. Assignments and readings have been modified to fit ten modules for this Virtual Course, somewhat less than the "complete immersion" of students on campus over 18 class sessions in a Block at CC. We have also modified the topics you will be asked to discuss with a personal, student correspondent and Walt Hecox '64 as professor for this course. Above all, we seek to make this an enjoyable and rewarding opportunity to stretch your mind and reach out to the younger generation (or the older generations) and their issues and concerns.
Thanks for being brave as a pioneer in this endeavor at Web-based dialog! As questions and concerns arise, and as you have suggestions for strengthening this approach to continuing education, please be in touch with the Alumni Office or Walt Hecox in the Economics and Business Department.
You will find a series of ten learning modules comprise this course. (The Modules be accessed via the Topics page) Each module is constructed so that you will spend approximately 4-5 hours total reading some assigned materials, surfing the Web to check out some related Web sites, and writing E-mail answers to several topics chosen to help you reflect on the contents of the module.
Each participant will be moving through the modules at roughly the same pace, but there is plenty of flexibility for taking your time, adjusting to the demands of work and your many other commitments. In addition to a lively interchange you will have over your E-mail answers with a student correspondent and Walt Hecox, we hope to connect the participants together in Discussion Groups so that you can learn from each other. Please bare with us as we see what pace develops for all of you to move through the modules and how best to connect you together.
You were asked to take this course either Fall or Spring Semester of the 1997/98 academic year. Within the roughly 15 weeks of a semester, we only ask that you move from the first module to the second and so on, rather than skipping ahead and working on modules out of order because the topics and corresponding material is cumulative. Please find a pattern for completing the modules which best fits your life and we will attempt to respond accordingly in our answers back to your E-mail postings.
As part of the registration for this course, the Alumni Office should be now have sent you two paperback books which form a major part of the reading for this course:
Neil Howe and Bill Strauss, 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? (New York: Random House - Vintage Books, 1993).
Timothy Penny and Steven Schier, Payment Due: A Nation in Debt, A Generation in Trouble (New York: HarperCollins - Westview Press, 1996).
Portions of these books are assigned as readings in most of the Modules, which also have some "hot-links" to other reading on the Web.
Please work through the reading before you tackle the E-mail topics in a particular module since the topics often (but not always) draw from the readings.
Shared ideas is the goal! The topics provided with each Module are meant as a spring-board for you to discuss those issues and ideas which excite and concern you. There are no "right" answers to these topics! We may find ourselves disagreeing among generations or just between individuals at times. More likely, we may enter into a continuing on-line discussion of the issues and concerns, in the process expanding our understanding of how different generations approach entitlements and the hopes and fears of their age group.
As you send in E-mail responses, you will receive back comments and sometimes questions. The idea is that our E-mail dialogue will evolve over the months, forming something of a journal which traces a joint exploration of Generation X and entitlements.
Please be aware that your journal responses, and the answers you receive back, are considered a private conversation. None of your journal will be shared with others in the class or elsewhere without your permission. So, please feel free to explore, probe, express doubts and criticism as well as praise for the dimensions of the generations which we explore.
You will have an E-Mail account at Colorado College which can be accessed via the World Wide Web. Directions will be sent to you concerning how to access your E-Mail account, make entries, and read responses.
Instructions for Using Your Electronic Journal
Your Personal Student Correspondent
An important dimension to this course are the students on campus who will serve as Personal Correspondents to the various participants. We will ask students who have either taken the Generation X course at CC already, or are interested in the topic to take on the role of Corespondent. The same student will respond to your E-mail messages throughout the course. They will tell you something about themselves and share with you their concerns and reactions to the materials you are reading and reflecting upon in your writing.
The Block Plan at CC is demanding of students' time! We will endeavor to provide quick responses to your E-mail messages, within the demands of the students primary commitment which is their classes. Near the end of blocks, you may find some delay as students study for exams and prepare papers. Please be understanding of their time schedule. But if you feel that the feedback is not timely or adequate, please contact Walt Hecox so we can work out a solution.
Interacting with Walt Hecox as "Prof"
In addition to the responses you receive back from your personal student correspondent, Walt will chip in with comments as well. We hope this will stimulate a 3-way dialogue that will further strengthen the experience.
As the Block Plan places demands on students, likewise it does so
on professors. So, please bear with any delays which occur in
responses you receive from Walt. But again, keep in touch as concerns
arise.
Critiquing this Virtual Course
The Web is exploding around us. You would not be in this course if you did not have some expertise in "surfing" the Web and some desire to explore it as a learning medium. Please reflect along the way about how this "learning" experience evolves and share your thoughts with the Alumni Office and Walt Hecox. We think there is great potential for Web-based learning and interaction to supplement other programs which Colorado College offers its students, alumni, parents and friends. Thanks again for being part of the first experiment with this approach.
When technical problems arise, if the instructions in the syllabus do not make sense, as concerns or ideas occur, PLEASE be in touch by phone, fax, or E-Mail:
Walt Hecox '64
Economics and Business Department
Phone: 719-389-6413
FAX: 719-389-6927
E-mail:
whecox@coloradocollege.edu
Diane Brown Benninghoff '68
Alumni Office
Phone: 1-800-852-6519
FAX: 719-389-6271
E-mail:
alumni@coloradocollege.edu