COURSE POLICIES

Attendance

The content of this class is not simply the textbooks and the readings; it is what takes place in the classroom, the conversation, the give and take, listening to others and sharing your ideas. For that reason, attendance is required. Sometimes it will take some effort to show up – but, as the old saying goes, 80% of success is showing up.

There will be a significant grade penalty for missing more than two meetings of the course (or the equivalent) across the semester.

If you have to miss class for illness or another obligation, I will give you an additional assignment to make up for an absence. If you do miss a class, for whatever reason, be sure to talk with the professor or the TA to find out what you’ve missed.

Distractions

Please be ready to begin at the beginning of the hour. Please do not be a distraction to the class or the professor (say, by looking at your phone). Please do not leave the room while we are in session unless it is an emergency. Please do not prepare to leave before class is finished. Arriving late or being a distraction to the class or the professor will count as the equivalent of half a missed class.

Attendance in the Time of COVID-19

I understand the challenges of attending class remotely – or attending in person – during the public health crisis of our time. If there is a reason that you won’t be able to attend class regularly please sign up to talk to me at office hours and we will make a plan for your success in the course.

Communication

We will use this Voices website (for the syllabus and the schedule) and Moodle (to distribute announcements, share readings, upload assignments, and keep the grade book).

I will respond to brief questions over email, but for longer conversations please just sign up for office hours.

We will frequently distribute updates, news items, and discussion questions via the Moodle Announcements Forum. We will prepare for class with an ongoing discussion on the Moodle Discussion Forum. Posts will go out over email and be preserved on our Moodle site. You are responsible for checking your email once a day.

Technology

We will use our time in class to talk, listen, discuss, and share ideas. Toward that end, students are not permitted to use laptops or phones in the classroom. In the past, these have proved to be a distraction to students and the professor. There will be exceptions, such as when we are meeting remotely. But here, too, I ask you to put your phone away, turn off notifications, close your email, and silence your social media feeds so that you can focus on the work we are doing together.

Papers and Deadlines

Late papers will only be accepted by permission of the instructor. Unless I grant a special dispensation, papers will be penalized a letter grade for each day they are late.

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism

A full statement of the Code of Academic Integrity is included in the Scot’s Key. You are responsible for reading and understanding it.

If, in any of your written assignments, you use the words or the ideas of another without attribution, you are committing plagiarism, the academic equivalent of high treason. If you borrow the words of others, you must place them in quotation marks and properly cite the work. If you paraphrase the words of others, you must cite the source.

As a practical rule, if you use more than four words in a row from a source, you must place these in quotation marks and cite the source. For more information on plagiarism, I encourage you to consult Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill handout, “Plagiarism.”

Any student caught plagiarizing or cheating or otherwise violating the Code of Academic Integrity will fail the course and be referred to the Dean for Curriculum and Academic Engagement.

The Learning Center

The Learning Center, which is in APEX (Gault library) offers a variety of academic support services, programs and 1:1 meetings available to all students. Popular areas of support include time management techniques, class preparation tips and test taking strategies. In addition, the Learning Center coordinates peer-tutoring for several academic departments. Students are encouraged to schedule an appointment.

An additional support that the Learning Center offers is English Language Learning. Students can receive instruction or support with English grammar, sentence structure, writing, reading comprehension, reading speed, vocabulary, listening comprehension, speaking fluency, pronunciation, and American culture through 1:1 meetings with the Learning Center staff, ELL Peer Tutoring, ELL Writing Studio courses, and other programming offered throughout the year.

The Learning Center also coordinates accommodations for students with diagnosed disabilities. At the beginning of the semester, students should contact the Learning Center to make arrangements for securing appropriate accommodations. Although the Learning Center will notify professors of students with documented disabilities and the approved accommodations, students are encouraged to speak with professors during the first week of each semester. If a student does not request accommodations or does not provide documentation to the Learning Center, faculty are under no obligation to provide accommodations.

Recording and Photography

No student may record or photograph any classroom activity without the express written consent of the professor.

Some of our class meetings, whether held online or face-to-face, will be recorded this semester by the professor for the use of students in the class. These recordings will allow students who miss class to keep up with the course. The video and audio recording and other course materials are to be used for educational purposes only and are meant only for students currently enrolled in the course. No one should distribute recordings, screenshots, or other class material beyond class without the express permission of all involved in the recording. College classrooms are places to test out new ideas, challenge assumptions, and engage timely and sometimes sensitive issues. Students who enter this space should be able to do so with the assurance that their comments will not be shared beyond the classroom.