This course contains activities related to attendance, on-line participation, homework, special projects, and two exams.  The details of each of these activities is discussed below.  You will be given the chance to customize how your performance in this course is to be evaluated.

Attendance - Attendance will be graded according to the following scheme:  A for perfect attendance, A- for one missed lecture, B for two missed lectures, C for three missed lectures, D for four or five missed lectures, and an F for more than five missed lectures.  To receive credit for attending a lecture, you must sign or initial a name roster that will be past around the class each lecture.  If it is not past to you during class, please sign it immediately after the class is over on the front table.   You will be expected to be present for the entire class presentation and be paying attention (see electronic equipment policy below).  For example, signing up for attendance and then using the laptop to banter with others in a chat room during lecture is a violation of attendance credit. 

Homework - Homework assignments will consist of three short answer essay questions.  These will be selected, end of the chapter, questions.  The questions assigned are listed in the tentative course schedule on this syllabus.   They will be evaluated on the basis of completion (an adequate level of completion in my judgment).  I intend to make several exam questions pertain to the concepts in these homework questions.  Homework will be evaluated according to the following scheme: A for all assignments completed, B for one missed assignment, C for two missed assignments, D for three missed assignments, and F for more than three missed assignments.   Do not copy verbatim out of the textbook.  Look for the answers, study the text, and put it into your own words. [UW-System Academic Student Code]

On-line Participation - Each week a question relating to Geology, Science, and Society will be posted on the web at the Discussion web pages at Learn@UW-Stout.  Your task will be to answer this question OR to critique another person's answer to this question via an on-line discussion forum.  Please follow the guidelines that are linked on this web page.  This activity will be evaluated based on the following scheme: Your first posting pertaining to that particular week's question will be evaluated for credit.  Two points for a good answer or critique, one point for a sufficient answer or critique.  I won't be able to read each posting carefully (however, occasionally I might).  I will scan your posting and make a judgment of two points or one.  It will be a subjective evaluation.  You must post your first article before Friday at 8am for each week's question.  This is the time and day at which the next week's question will begin.  (The first on-line participation deadline is Friday, September 14.)  There will be 13 questions in all.  A for 26-22 pts, A- for 21-19 pts, B for 18-15 pts, C for 14-13 pts, D for 12-10 pts, F for less than 10 pts accumulated.  Do not hesitate to critique another person's posting because you think it may effect their score.  I will review postings in chronological order.  The score for original postings will not be affected by later postings. 

Special Project - This will be a one time report or project that is submitted.   It will be evaluated on a 20 point scale.  The points will reflect the following: 1) Is it neatly typed? 2) Does it clearly indicate its purpose or intent? 3) Has significant amount of work been given to obtain information from several sources and have these sources been cited in the bibliography? 4) Did it summarize the important information, concepts, or studies? 5) Did it accomplish it's purpose or intent? 

Please submit to me a title and very brief outline of your proposed project for approval by February 28, 2008.  The projects will be due on April 28, 2008.  A for 20-19 pts, A- for 18 pts, B+ for 17 pts, B for 16 pts, B- for 15 pts, C+ for 14 pts, C for 13 pts, C - for 12 pts, D for 11-10 pts, F for less than 10 pts.  The projects should be related to Geology and your program of study at Stout.  Such that, if you are an early childhood education major you may want to construct a lesson plan that involves teaching a Geology concept to children.  If you find an interesting geology related article in the newspaper, you could do an in-depth report on the subject.  A great idea would be to develop a service-learning project.  A project could entail performing a review of water quality issues in Dunn County and making your report (or PowerPoint) available for on the web for people of Dunn County.

Exams - There will be a mid-term and final exam.  These will be multiple choice exams based on material covered in the course. 

Midterm Exam
Section 1 - Tuesday, March 11, 2008 (regular class time and room)
Section 2 - Monday, March 10, 2008 (regular class time and room)

Final Exam
Section 1 - Friday, May 9, 2008; 10-11:50am, room 141 (Science Wing)
Section 2 - Tuesday, May 13, 2008; 8-9:50am, room 141 (Science Wing)

If an exam is missed because of extenuating circumstances, based on my judgment (documentation needed), an essay make-up exam will be given.  Letter grades on the exams will be assigned according to the following percent grading scale.  

I reserve the right to boost all student exam scores.  If the class average falls below a letter score of 'C+', then a boost will be given to move the average score to 'C+' or better for the midterm and final exams.

Customized Weighting

These customized weightings will have no effect on how your letter grade on each assignment is determined. It will only effect how the final course letter grade and percent is tabulated.  Activities that are given a zero weighting will not effect your course grade, i.e. you don't have to perform those activities.  Only in cases for extenuating circumstances (documentation required) are exceptions made to the rules above.

Link to Dr. Scott's policy on cell phones in the classroom and other electronic devices (please read).  If I sense that many students are using their laptop for non-geology related activities in lecture (such as a non-geology chat room), I may request that displays be lowered for all students.

Recommendations:

About 95% of the class presentation materials (lecture notes, audio podcasts of lectures, lecture powerpoints) can be accessed on the web. I would recommend that you read the lecture notes on the web before it is presented in class. By doing this you will know what is or is not on the web and can ask questions about topics that you didn't clearly understand. You may find it advantageous to follow along with the lecture notes or powerpoints in class.  (Please note that not all the lecture notes are directly contained in the Sections web pages.  Some may be linked to the Sections web page.)  This way you can follow along with the lecture without being pre-occupied about writing the lecture notes down. Be careful - having the lecture notes on the web will either enhance your ability to learn the material or make it easier to procrastinate and fall behind. Nothing can be learned without taking time to concentrate hard on the subject matter - be it out of a book or on the web. 

The Powerpoint slides of my geology presentations can be accessed on the web at Learn@UW-Stout.  Some of the images are copyrighted from geology books and some are my own pictures and graphics.  Do not copy and freely distribute these images.

Keep up with your reading and assignments. If you are having difficulty with a particular concept or problem, please come and see me. I will be glad to help out!  I am planning on emailing a grade progress report to each student about four times during the semester.  This will inform you of what I have recorded for assignments and activities.

I encourage you to work together on assignments and studying for exams. However, do not copy verbatim (or mostly verbatim in my judgment) another person's work. For example, if two or more work on a homework assignment together, each must submit their own homework solution and they should not be duplicate solutions.  Copying and pasting large passages from the web and submitting this work as your own for a special project is academically dishonest.  Web sources can certainly be used when properly citing and identifying other people's work.  The main way to communicate with me outside of class is by email.

If you have a special circumstance such as a visual or hearing impairment, please stop into my office and we'll discuss ways in which your learning environment can be optimized.

Additional textbooks that may be useful: