Expectations on Students
- Take an active role in your education
- Accept responsibility
While the instructor serves as a guide, coach, facilitator, and evaluator, learning is ultimately the responsibility of each individual. Therefore, students are expected to do the following as needed to achieve the course objectives: (1) study course material; (2) ask questions and seek help with subject matter that is not understood after a reasonable amount of independent study; (3) carefully and thoughtfully complete all assigned exercises; (4) do extra study, practice exercises, and review materials of this class or prerequisite if needed.
- Be respectful to your peers, the instructor, and to pertinent university policies
Class is a learning opportunity for all enrolled students, not just for one. Students are expected to respect others’ opinions and comments, be respectful of others’ time, and not interrupt the instructor. As a courtesy to all, I would expect everyone to put their phones on silent, not text/receive calls during class, not be late or leave early in a disruptive manner, and not use inappropriate language when addressing classmates or the instructor.
You may take notes on your tablet/computer if that is the mode you are comfortable with. However, these devices are frequently distracting for the user and those around them. If I believe your computer or tablet is distracting you or others, I will ask you to put it away.
Course Structure
The course is designed primarily around the slides and will be expanded on through discussions in class. The textbook can be used as a reference but is not necessary since I will change the sequence to ensure that the topics are taught in a more coherent manner.
There will be weekly problem set and quiz, 3 exams to evaluate students’ effectiveness of learning.
Problem sets are to be turned in before the due date. PLEASE start early (you should learn time management from this process). To receive full credit for an assignment,
- To receive full credit for your homework, you must answer each question correctly and show your work. If you get a correct answer but fail to show your work, you will get partial credit. You will get partial credit for a question if you attempt it (with supporting work) but get it wrong and you have shown some work. If you do not attempt a question at all or do not show sufficient work for an incorrect answer, you will receive a zero for that question.
If you answer each question, but fail to put forth a good effort, you may be docked additional points. For example,
Question: What is the right answer? Explain.
Answer: 12 (which is correct but you did not explain)
You will lose points.
- Each problem set needs to be submitted in a word document or pdf on Canvas. You can take picture and convert them into a pdf file using Office Lens (see this link for guidence). It is recommended that you learn how to use equation editor within Word. Unclear writing leads to a loss of points.
- Each assignment shows original work: no copying, no pasting, no submitting work done by anyone else. If this happens once you will receive a 0 on that problem set, if it happens twice you will receive a 0 on all problem sets.
· Late Work. Late assignments and quizzes will not be accepted unless special situations, see detail in Footnote 4 (late for a few minutes will be fine, but not for hours). I encourage you to plan accordingly. I am willing to make exceptions ONLY under specific circumstances AND when notified and justified by official documents in a reasonable advance.
[1] Open and prompt communication with the professor is crucial.
Each problem set will be graded based on these criteria. Answers will be posted on Canvas on the day following the due date and it is up to each student to review their own assignment for correctness. Students who do this on a regular basis tend to be those that perform the best in this course.
Quizzes will be administered through Canvas. They are designed to serve as intermediary measures of your mastery of the material. These quizzes are aimed at giving you a quick concept check to understand if you are following the content. I recommend doing the quizzes before the homework assignments. You may use notes and the book to complete the quizzes, but you may NOT use other people to answer the questions. Again, no late submissions will be accepted except under specific circumstances with proof and if notified of a justified reason beforehand.
Exams:
There will be three exams in this course, two midterms and one final. These exams could be challenging. They may contain questions that you have already seen before in the textbook, problem sets, or quizzes. However, They may also contain questions that you have not seen before but are based on the concepts covered in the class (as mentioned above, application of knowledge is one of the key elements of “higher” education).
The best way you can prepare is to 1) engage in the learning process, 2) spend time working on the problem sets and understanding the concepts covered, 3) grade your own problem sets for correctness, and 4) teach others the concepts covered in the class.
I will not allow for make-up exams if you miss an exam except under specific circumstances with proof and if notified of a justified reason beforehand (in a week’s advance at least). Exams will be administered by the testing center. I will notify the tested chapters, date, and venue.
Missing any exam with no legit reasons supported by official documents (see footnote 3) means an automatic “F” to this class.
[1] For expectable events, such as jury duty, wedding and funeral, service notification, wedding announcement and obituary are acceptable documents. For personal health issues, recommendation letters for leave opened by liscenced health care providers are acceptable documents. (No personal information of you should be revealed in this letter.) For unexpectable emergency like car accidents, police reports can function as justification for your leave. Please inform me as soon as the event emerges so that we can plan ahead. Ex-ante notification for forseeable events and prompt notification for unforeseeable emergencies to me are strongly encouraged. As instructor, I reserve the right to decline request for consideration if there is unreasonable latency in the report.