September11:
Before and After
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How Will I Be Graded?
 
 
We will use a variety of techniques to assess what you are learning in this class.Grades will be based on the following activities:
 
We will explain each of these in some detail.
 

Class Attendance and Weekly Minute Memos
 
Class attendance is important in any class, but it is especially critical in a team taught venture like ours, where you will hear from a wide variety of professors on a wide variety of topics. Accordingly, some of the credit you earn toward your final grade will come from attending lecture, and turning in a brief “minute memo” at the end of class.

Attendance credit will be awarded on the following scale:

27 days attended – A+ 
25-26 days – A 
23-24 days – B 
21-22 days – C 
19-20 days -- D 
18 and fewer – F 
 
We will draw up a seating chart on the second day of class, and you need to be in your seat in order to get attendance credit.  There are 27 possible days of class, not counting the first week of school.  We will allow everyone to miss two more days of class for any reason (illness, job interview, family wedding, bad mood), but every missed day after that results in a lowered grade.  There are no additional excused absences except for those taken in accordance with the University's policy on religious holidays (to read that policy click here.)  In order to be excused for a religious holiday, submit the form provided by the Dean of the Faculties (you can download it here) by January 16 and we will arrange for you to make up the missed work and credit. 

 

The minute memo is literally that: a few sentences that you write (in legible handwriting!) about the most important thing you have learned that day and any major questions that remain unanswered for you on the topic.This will help us assess what you are getting from lecture, and what questions we need to be sure to clear up for you.These will be graded pass/fail, they will only count against you if you do not do them. 


Multiple Choice Quizzes

 
To help us assess what you are learning in lecture, you will take 5 multiple choice quizzes over the lecture material.After each professor concludes his or her lectures, we will post a number of on-line quiz questions about what he or she had to say on the quiz-site section of this web site.You may answer some or all of those questions to see how well you understood the material, but you will not be graded on these on-line quizzes. If you get the questions wrong, be sure to see your AI for help on what you do not understand.The quizzes will only be on-line for two days after the lecture was given, and then they will be replaced with new questions.

Because quiz questions can be difficult, tedious, and time consuming to write, we would like your help.  On your weekly web page there will be a link (called Quiz Quest) for you to submit 2 multiple choice quiz questions on the week's lectures (but no more than 2, please).  If they are good questions (i.e., not just the first thing that popped into your head when you walked out of lecture) and we use them, they can help you earn Good Citizen's Points (GCPs) which can work to your advantage at the end of the semester when for instance, you might be teetering between a B+ and an A-.  A lot of GCP's can help boost you up toward the A-, a lack of them will do you no good at all.


Every three weeks, in discussion section, we will take ten minutes and ask you a sample of 15 of those questions.The questions you are asked will be the ones you saw on the web site earlier, but you will not know which ones.You will be graded on these in-class quizzes, each one will give you 5% of your final grade. Quizzes will be held in discussion section on January 25, February 15, March 8, April 5, and April 26.
 
If something comes up and you need to miss a quiz, you will be allowed to take one makeup only, at the end of the semester at 5:00 on April 19 in a room to be announced.No one can take more than one makeup, and makeups cannot be taken to improve the grade you got the first time around. 

 

Weekly Warm Up Exercises

 
In addition to what goes on in the lecture, the class readings are central to what you will learn in this class.You will profit most from the lectures if you do the readings first.To encourage you to do this, we will ask you several questions about the readings each week.Those questions will need to be answered and submitted to your AI electronically by midnight on Sunday of the week before the readings will be discussed. No late exercises will be accepted. The exercise you will answer will be available on line with that week’s readings by the preceding Wednesday.You will complete each exercise for a total of 15.Because there are so many of you and so many assignments, each week your AIs will randomly select only half of the exercises to evaluate with a letter grade; the rest will be graded pass/fail.Everyone will have half of his or her papers graded with a letter grade over the course of the semester, but in any given week you will not know if yours will be chosen to be graded or not.Our best advice is to do the kind of work each week that you would be happy to receive a grade on.

Grading Rubric and Comment Codes 

We will grade your Warm-ups on a four-point scale.  You will receive one of four grades: OK+, OK, OK-, and F.  We will reach our assessment based on our evaluations of your assignments on the following points (Note, So that we can grade more efficiently, we will refer to these by the codes that follow each listing.  We will indicate problems by noting the areas where your work needs improvement):

1. Completeness (COM): Does your answer address all relevant questions? 

2. Organization/ Clarity (ORG):  Do you make clear, succinct points, organized effectively? 

3. Depth of Analysis (DOA): Have you used critical thinking to break down and understand the  concepts and readings? 

4. Use of Evidence  (EVD): Have you integrated evidence from the readings into your answer?

5. Technical Accuracy (TA)  Is your answer free of spelling, grammatical, and stylistic problems so that we can clearly understand what you have to say?

In addition, we will refer to the following Success Strategy Codes:

RQ    Reread the questions thoroughly.
RT     Reread the source text(s).
WTS  Discuss writing strategies with a tutor at Writing Tutorial Services: BH 206 and 
         Ashton Hall, 855-6737 for an appointment.
OUT  Outline your plan before writing.
PR   Recruit a friend for a final proofreading.
BS   Allow yourself more brainstorming time to get deeper into the topic.
 

 

Single Cool Down Exercise

 
One of our goals is to take advantage of this unusual class format to introduce you to the variety of ways that different political scientists approach a subject.Consequently we would like you to do a little self-conscious thinking about what you are learning in this class. At the start of the semester we will ask you several questions about the different approaches you will learn in the class, and we will discuss them over the course of the next weeks.At the end of this semester we will ask you to complete a final on-line exercise answering these questions and evaluating what you have learned.The exercise will be posted on-line by Monday, April 22, and will be due by midnight, April 28.It is worth 5% of your final grade.Everybody’s Cool Down Exercise will receive a letter grade.

Discussion Section Activities


Studies tell us that students learn better when they have the chance to put course concepts into their own words or to discuss them with other students.   Discussion sections will be your chance to delve into the issues raised in the lectures and in the readings.

In discussion section you will be assigned to a 5-person team to work with for the semester.  Your team will discuss issues raised in the weekly lectures and readings, and will work together on in-class assignments. Most weeks in the discussion section, your team will turn in some product, such as a summary of your discussion or two opposing viewpoints on a particular issue. Group members who are present will sign their name to the assignment and all group members will receive the same grade. Grading will be on a pass/fail basis, and will reward those teams who take the assignment seriously and who make a sincere effort to explore the challenging concepts we are dealing with.