I took ENGL 90 in the summer with Professor Allen & TA Mark Gallagher. As an online course, we had to watch 2-3 video lectures each week about a late-Shakespearean play, plus 1-2 film adaptations of each play. We covered King Lear, Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra, Othello, and The Tempest. There were written one-page essays during Weeks 2-5 on the play being studied. We also had to post on the discussion boards about the play studied each week, and attend weekly discussion section via Zoom which lasted for about an hour each. There is a cumulative final in the end, which can be taken in person or online via ProctorU.

Grades are calculated as follows:
30% - Participation in Live Sections and Written Responses on Discussion Board
10% - Essay 1 (one page) on King Lear
10% - Essay 2 (one page) on Measure for Measure
10% - Essay 3 (one page) on Antony and Cleopatra
10% - Essay 4 (one page) on The Tempest
30% - Final Exam (cumulative)

Participation via discussion board posts and speaking during live sections are graded based on completion. The TA will go over what each student posted on the discussion board and ask for the student to add to his/her paragraphs.
The one-page analysis essays were easy to do, but the TA heavily emphasized following through with deep analysis over surface statements. I got an average of 88.5% on all four essays.
The final exam was difficult. It had 35 short sentence responses, 2 short paragraph summaries, and 2 long essay questions synthesizing the written play and the film adaptations. The short sentence responses ask for very minor details that I overlooked while studying the plays. The summaries were easy to do. The long essay questions were a little bit more challenging since you had to remember the film adaptations as well. I ended up with a 72% on the final, but I had chosen to take this class P/NP, and got a P on my transcript.

Overall, this class has a heavy but doable workload, as long as you are not taking any other classes during the summer session. The written assignments were easy to do and the course is very well-organized. The final might be challenging if you did not study enough or did not watch all of the lecture videos/film adaptations. Mark was a very intelligent TA who pushed us to analyse the text deeper, and the live sections were always engaging.