Announcement posted February 5, 2011
The final exam will be conducted like the assignments you have worked on all semester. Students won't need to come to campus for the exam. However, note the due date and time. I will try to contact students within 24 hours, if not sooner, of receiving your final exam. It is important that you follow our course policies on contacting me if you didn't receive a reply.
You receive an essay score and discussion board posting update after I receive your essay. You should have your score by Thursday afternoon for essays sent Wednesday. The essay scores are based on 10 points and are roughly equal to the following grades:
10-9 = A, 8 = B, 7 = C, 6 = D
Keep track of your point totals and match them with the syllabus grade scale.
Discussion board postings are based on credit points. Note that "Major Postings" are worth double credit. I might be a bit off on this, but I believe we will have 20 possible credits for postings. The number of points you receive will be based on the percentage of credits earned. For example, if you earn 18 out of 20 credits (90%), you would then get 90% of participation points (27).
I understand the book store ran out of our text, but there is a text on reserve at the Citrus Library so you can make copies of our readings for this week from that text. Let me know if you have problems accessing the text.
I've added about all the students I can add to the class. Students hoping to add can perhaps take hope that there should be more offerings in the spring than we had last fall.
Course Policies
If you are struggling with the readings or writings, please take time to ask questions and give an update if you are not able to send in an assignment during the week. If you don't receive a reply from me on an assignment or question within 48 hours, please send a follow-up message. If you don't receive a reply to your follow-up e-mail, then definitely use my voice mail. This can be found on our syllabus. If you have not received a score, than assume that you have no credit for the assignment and make sure to take the initiative to find out why.
Plagiarism is a common problem in academics and seems especially so in on-line classes. Some students copy directly from Internet sites, other texts or even other students' papers and fail to include quotation marks and citation. I run into numerous incidents of this each semester and am becoming increasingly less tolerant of this problem. I will approach incidents of plagiarism on a case by case basis. However, at the minimum, expect a failing grade in the paper if plagiarism is found. Also expect that I will file an incident report with Citrus College's Dean of Students. At the maximum, you will also receive an F in the course. Any questions? If so, please send them via email so we can make sure this doesn't happen to you.
Remember:
- don't use outside sources for our papers. If you feel confused, use the discussion board or contact me directly.
- while it is okay to talk out ideas with friends and family, don't have them write any of the papers for you.
- only changing a few words from someone else's writing means you still have to include quotation marks and citation. I can help students with examples of that if you feel you need it.