Your course (e.g., Mth 151, Mth 173, Phy 121, Phy 232, etc. ):
If you have one, please provide your access code. You may leave this part
blank if you do not yet have an access code.
Remember that it is crucial to enter your access code correctly. As
instructed, you need to copy the access code from another document rather than
typing it.
Your VCCS email address. You is the address you were instructed in Step
1 to obtain. If you were not able to obtain that address, indicate this
below.
Task: `q001. Return to the homepage for your course, as
you bookmarked it in the first document for Step 4 of the Orientation.
Your homepage includes a Table of Assignments, Topics and
Specific Objectives.
The link to this table is listed along with other links near the top of your
homepage. Click this link and scroll down through this
Table.
The first thing you will see is the heading Module 1.
Below the heading for the Module you will see a
note indicating when the first test, for Module 1, is to be completed.
(The first test might be referred to as the 'Major Quiz', as 'Test 1', as
'Chapter 2 Test', as 'Chapter R test', or by some similar name, depending on
your specific course).
The course is divided into Modules.
Scroll down the page and locate the headings for subsequent Modules.
Briefly state how many modules you find,
and also when the first test is to be completed.
**** Your response (insert your response beginning in the next line; the next
line is blank and doesn't include the #$... prompt):
#$&* (your response should have gone on the line above this one)
Task: `q002. Now scroll down and locate your numbered
Assignments. The number of an Assignment is in the first column of the
table.
You don't yet need to know how the Assignments work. You will learn
that by working through the first couple of Assignments. At this stage we
want to focus on where to find information.
Just below each Assignment is a list of Objectives relevant to that
assignment. You won't really know what the Objectives mean until you have
worked through the Assignment, and even then your understanding will develop
over a period of days or weeks as your brain gradually rewires itself and you
apply the necessary ideas to subsequent assignments.
Right now we just want to focus on where the Objectives are and how they are
listed.
Note that a typical list of Objectives is followed by a set of Technical
Statements. The Objectives are intended for you to read. The
Technical Statements often use notations and terminologies with which you might
not be familiar, and when first working through an Assignment you can focus on
the first statement of the Objectives, safely ignoring the Technical Statements.
Note also that the word
Relate
is included with many objectives, in the form of a link.
You don't need to click on that link every time it appears. The link takes
you to a discussion of what it means to 'Relate' a set or list of things.
- Basically 'Relate' as used here just means
that you need to know how those things are all related to one another, and
be able to apply those relationships to solving problems.
- This is all you really need to know right
now.
- The link gives a more extensive explanation
in terms of a number of examples, and you might find it useful later.
Describe in your response:
- where the Objectives are and how they are listed
- what you should do when you see the link
Relate
**** Your response (insert your response beginning in the next line; the next
line is blank and doesn't include the #$... prompt):
#$&* (your response should have gone on the line above this one)
Task: `q003. You won't fully understand the sequencing of
topics and activities, or the reasons for the sequencing, until you have worked
through a number of assignments.
Assumptions:
- It is unrealistic to suppose that the majority of students in a course
are capable, without prior preparation, of reading, extracting meaning from
and solving problems in a text written at a level appropriate to the course.
- having the topic talked to a class in a lecture is generally ineffective
for the majority of the class
- students sharing ideas with and solving problems in conjunction with
other students can be very helpful, given a group of students who have
already engaged and experienced the topic (... toolkits ...)
- it takes time for stuff to sink in, an idea the instructor believes to
have for centuries been obvious to individuals with rigorous content
knowledge, to now be increasingly supported by the rapidly advancing field
of neurobiology, but not to have filtered down to the 'field' of education
- if the goal of the course is integrated understanding and mastery, it is
not possible to break the learning of this subject into a linear series of
topics, with one topic mastered before moving on to the next
Typically you will be introduced to a topic through a sequenced set of
questions (the 'qa'), in which you will
- Answer a series of questions, based on knowledge from prerequisite
courses or from earlier in this course, without having been first 'taught'
how to answer the questions. The purpose is to 'engage your brain' on
the topic and provide you with a context for later activities.
- Solve, take notes on and generally understand a sequenced series of
worked-out problems (the Introductory Problem Sets) illustrating the
application of the topic, along with others.
- Apply the ideas to one or more actual, hands-on physical systems,
typically setting the system up, taking data, analyzing results and
answering questions.
- Read Class Notes documents which may address any combination of selected
previous, current and future topics, and/or view video-linked versions of
the same.
- Read the associated 'material' in the text and solve text problems.
The text is the 'last word' on a topic, not the first. By the time you
read about the topic in the text, you will already know quite a bit about it
through having engaged and experienced it. The text is intended as the
final document for the topic, presenting it in clear relation to others.
These activities can span a number of assignments, so that by end of the
process the topic will have had time to percolate and sink in.
The main thing you need to understand about this is that there are dozens of
topics in your course, each of which can require days or weeks to develop.
The result is that at any time you will simultaneously be
developing and working on a number of topics.
Again you aren't expected to completely understand the assumptions and the
sequencing. However give a short synopsis of what you do understand.
**** Your response (insert your response beginning in the next line; the next
line is blank and doesn't include the #$... prompt):
#$&* (your response should have gone on the line above this one)