Fall 2019 Course Syllabi

Course Requirements: Participation is expected. Learning takes place through participation and engagement in the material and the course, and thus, it is essential that you attend and actively participate in class on a regular bases. Read, log on, do the problems, interact with your peers, the material, and me, the instructor. If, by chance, an emergency requires that you miss a substantial amount of class, please let me know so we can make arrangements. I understand that life happens, so please be honest and let me know if you run into a problem. Interaction in an online course is different than in an in-person class, but we can make it work. Use the discussion feature in Blackboard to ask me and your classmates questions. I expect you to ask questions, be curious, have fun, be challenged, and interact so that your learning experience is maximized. I also hope that you will interact with your peers. Working with others to discuss the material will help you gain a better understanding of it. As part of an online course, you will spend more time teaching yourself concepts than you may be used to doing. Thus, you may have to read and reread sections of the text book and the online notes. Read slowly, take notes, try the examples, try and retry problems using the online resources, or try odd problems in the text so you can check your answers. When you get stuck, work problems online in one of the tutorials, watch the online videos, ask another student, or call or email me after you have given it your best shot. This course is schedule-driven, not self-paced. Thus, you must keep up and hand in assignments every week. In order to succeed you will have to work extremely hard! You will need to spend at least 1-2 hours each day reading the section and working problems (at least 8-10 hours/week or more). If you cannot commit this much time, please do not take the course because you will most likely not be successful. Homework: Homework is an important part of this course. It is extremely important for you to read and do the homework every day! I will assign weekly homework problems. These problems are the minimum amount of homework that you should complete. If you need to do more problems to understand the material, then you should do so. Weekly homework starts on Monday at 12:00 a.m. and is due no later than 11:59 p.m. the following Sunday (except the first week when you get an extra week in case you don't have course access right away). You get two attempts at each problem so you can learn from your mistakes, but not just repeatedly guess until you get the correct answer. Keep track of your individual assignment scores inside MyLab/Mastering. The MyLab/Mastering page is loaded with tools to help you learn - videos, animations, the book in an online format, StatCrunch (a statistical software program that is easy to use), a calculator, and other materials. Use these materials to your advantage. When working homework problems in MyLab/Mastering, you will notice icons on the side; you can click on these to pop-up videos, the calculator, StatCrunch, similar examples, and other helpful materials. Make sure you click around inside MyLab/Mastering so you can use it to its full potential.