Registration
First Week Rule
I often have a number of students hoping to add the class during the first week or two of the semester. So, to make sure that those students have time to join — and to be sure that registered students don’t delay getting started — I require you to do two things by the end of the first week.
Specifically, I’ll need to drop any registered student who does not complete both the Syllabus Quiz and the Canvas Message Assignment by 11:00 p.m on Sunday, August 20. [This is a correction.]
If that creates a problem for you, please contact me in advance. We can make another arrangement, if needed. But I do need you to contact me before Sunday.
Drop Dates
This semester, the deadlines for dropping the course are as follows:
- August 25, to be eligible for a refund
- September 1, to avoid a “W” on your permanent record
- November 9, to receive a “W” on your permanent record.
If you decide you need to drop, I recommend that you see a counselor to discuss what effect that might have on your educational plans.
Student Responsibility to Drop
Every term, several students disappear from the course for a variety of reasons. I cannot always tell if students have really left the course but and forgotten to officially drop), or if they’ve decided to prioritize her time differently and hope to get caught up.
If you stop logging in to Canvas or participating in the class, I will try to try to drop you before the November 9 deadline (I’d rather you received a “W,” rather than an “F”). I will also try to contact you before making that decision.
In the end, though, it is the student’s responsibility to drop by the appropriate deadlines. If you do decide you need to drop, please be sure you follow through with the Admissions Office.
More important, though: If you find yourself tempted to quit, I encourage you to contact me first. I might be able to help you get back on track.
Disability Statement
If you need special arrangements for a physical or learning disability, I encourage you to let me know, and to arrange an accommodation plan through Disabled Students Programs and Services (DSPS) as soon as you can. Working with DSPS isn’t a requirement, but they offer helpful support for both you and me.
Please visit the DSPS page to see what kind of help is officially available to you. If you’re on campus, you can drop by their office (Building 1800, at the west end of campus), or you can contact them by phone — (530) 741-6795 or email (dspsinfo@yccd.edu).
Communication
Announcements
Two or three times a week, I will post announcements for the class using (surprise!) Canvas’s Announcements. There will basically be two kinds:
- Reminders for upcoming assignments, changes to due dates, corrections, and other announcements related to the logistics of the course (how the course works);
- Instructional material, clarifications, responses to issues that come up in student work, and other items related to the content of the course (things to help you do your work).
Both kinds of announcements are important, so I recommend that you log in to the course and look for announcements at least three times each week—or, even better, consider setting up a “Notification” to inform you whenever an announcement appears (see the next item in this syllabus).
Notifications
Canvas has an incredibly flexible communications system. Indeed, at times, it can even be too flexible, and communications can get lost in the range of possible channels.
If you haven’t yet done so, I recommend that you go to your Canvas Settings and set up Notifications in a way that is comfortable for you. (I’ll walk you through that process in a video in the first week of the course, though if you’d like to do that now, go to about 3:40 in this video.) You can set it up so Canvas notifies you when there’s a new announcement (as mentioned above), as well as when I post a grade, or someone responds to a message in the Discussion forum, etc.
Discussions
Throughout the class, I will assign a number of Discussion Group Assignments (DGAs). These are designed to allow you to work through issues and ideas we bring up in class. I will also set up specific threads that focus on specific assignments, as well as general questions.
It’s important that everyone feel comfortable participating in Discussions, so please: be respectful of your peers. You may disagree, at times, but please do so thoughtfully and politely, not with sarcasm or derogatory remarks directed at any person or group of persons. Please remember that there is a feeling human being on the other end of the computer connection. There is a lot of room for debate, but not for flame wars.
On the other side of the coin: please don’t take criticism or advice personally. Love-fests don’t help anyone improve; honest suggestions do. When they’re right, we learn something new. But even when they’re wrong, we strengthen our own position by articulating why we think they’re wrong.
In short: strive both to give and to receive feedback, criticism, or advice with grace.
Canvas Messages (“Conversations”) and Personal Email
Messages to individuals (to your classmates, or to me) — Canvas calls these “Conversations” — should generally be used only for private communications. If you have any comments or questions that might be of interest to the class, please post them in an appropriate Discussion thread so others may benefit from the conversation.
For example, if you want to let me know why you haven’t turned in an assignment yet (a private issue that the rest of the class doesn’t need to know about), it would be appropriate to send me an individual Canvas message. If you are confused about the instructions on a writing assignment, though, it would be appropriate to ask that question in the Discussions area. You may be a little nervous about that, but try not to be. While you may fear that your question is obvious, it’s likely that others have a similar question — and sometimes students’ answers to such questions are clearer than my response.
For class-related issues, please contact me through Canvas; it’s much easier to keep track of conversations that way. For issues not related to the class, or in case you have trouble with Canvas (if you have trouble logging into Canvas, for example), you can go ahead and contact me through my personal email address (gkemble@yccd.edu).
I will respond within two business days (though I’m usually much quicker than that).
Dead Links
Every semester, I work to improve the course, which sometimes causes unintended glitches. If you find any “dead” links (or other mistakes—inconsistent due dates, typos, whatever), please let me know so I can fix them.
I am also open to feedback, so if you have any suggestions for improvement to the presentation, or you can identify areas that were confusing or not intuitive, please feel free to let me know that as well.
Standards
Using Modules
As modules are released, the assignments associated with the modules will also become available, in the course’s Assignments section. However, you should go directly to an assignment only as a convenience, after you have worked through the module leading up to the assignment.
Occasionally students try to skip straight to the assignment without working through the modules. This is a recipe for disaster, for a number of reasons. Please work through the modules thoroughly and in order, so that you will benefit from the explanations and preparatory writing assignments.
Formatting
Your three main essays should be formatted using MLA style. We’ll talk about this during the course, but here’s a short version:
Essays should:
- be typed, using a standard 12-point font (e.g., Times or Times New Roman);
- be double-spaced (never single-spaced; never triple-spaced);
- have one-inch margins;
- have a correctly formatted header, title, and pagination
- document sources correctly, using both in-text citation and a Works Cited page.
Final drafts of essays, especially, should be edited, proofread, and spell-checked.
And please give each essay a clever and informative title (“Essay 1” is neither clever nor informative….)
Submitting Essays
Unless specified otherwise, please submit assignments as a “File Upload” through the Assignments section in Canvas. (The most notable exception: Discussion Group Assignments.)
Please don’t submit work to my personal email unless it is absolutely necessary. It’s hard to keep track of work that is not submitted as instructed—especially work submitted outside Canvas.
If possible, please upload essays in Microsoft Word format (.doc, or .docx), as this format allows me to respond to your work most effectively. (Note that Google Docs can save a in Word format, under “File | Download.”)
If you do not have access to Word (or Google Docs), you may save and upload your essay as a PDF file. As I said, though, I am able to work more effectively with Word documents.
Note that Canvas won’t allow you to upload files in other formats (unless I’ve specified that other formats are acceptable).
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined as passing others’ words or ideas off as your own. This may take many forms. Some may be accidental, such as forgetting to credit information you’ve cut-and-paste from the Internet, or not realizing that you have to cite others’ work even if you don’t use their exact words.
Others are simply dishonest, such as buying a paper, having a friend of family member do an assignment, having ChatGPT write an essay, and so on. (I will say more about this last one in the next section.)
Please don’t.
Plagiarism is serious, and it carries serious consequences. At the very least, a plagiarized paper will receive an “Ignored” on the assignment, which would result in a “D” or “F” in the class (we’ll talk about my grading policies soon). But plagiarism may also result in disciplinary probation or suspension, or even expulsion. (See the Student Code of Conduct).
Most cases of plagiarism that I have encountered — and I have encountered many — have arisen from desperation. I hope that my grading policy (again, more on that soon) will help reduce desperation. But if you do find yourself growing desperate, please contact me as early as possible so that we can discuss strategies for success on the assignment.
A Word on Artificial Intelligence (AI)
You may have heard of so-called “Artificial Intelligence” (AI), especially the “large-language model” chat bots like Bing Chat or ChatGPT. These are sophisticated enough that they can actually write competent, if boring, essays. The social media platform TikTok shows lots of students, often high schoolers, having AI do their homework for them.
There are many problems with using AI this way, but I’ll point out two. First, as I mentioned above, having ChatGPT write an essay, and then turning it in as if it’s your own work, is clearly plagiarism.
But second, and more important, using ChatGPT to write an assignment — or even relying on it too much to brainstorm or organize a paper — hurts your ability to learn the critical thinking and expression tools that this class is intended to develop. For example, chat bots do a solid job creating summaries of articles, and some argue that we should just leave it to them. But the act of summarizing develops a wide range of skills: reading, analysis, critical thinking, writing, problem solving, and much more.
So yes, you could use a chat bot to summarize an article faster, and maybe even more “accurately,” than you could do it on your own. But your understanding of the article would be pretty shallow, which would limit your ability to used the article in your own argument.
I know that some teachers have banned the use of AI tools in their classes. I understand that policy, but it’s not the policy I’ve chosen. There are many ways that AI can help. And while I won’t be able to weave a lot of instruction around AI into this course — anything I would write could be about of date in by the time I hit “publish” — I may try to find ways to work things in throughout the semester, perhaps in discussion threads.
That said, I hope that my grading policies will give you the freedom to explore your own thinking and your own writing — to take risks and to use the act of writing as a tool for thinking. AI can be useful, but it can also undermine your ability to create something authentic and meaningful for yourself and your readers.
Next up: Grading
The next section is about my grading policies.