orientation part v

Your 'orientation part v' report has been received. Scroll down through the document to see any comments I might have inserted, and my final comment at the end.

** If you were in a course that meets in a classroom you would be attending regularly.  In an asychronous distance course, while you have the course materials and access to a great deal of instruction, you do not have the benefit of regular meetings, and it can be difficult to find the time to work on the course. 

You cannot allow this course to become something you need to 'find time' to do.  You need to schedule a regular time to work on this course, and you need to schedule a sufficient number of hours to do this work.

Though there are exceptions both ways, most people manage to establish a regular schedule are successful in these courses, and most people who failr to establish a regular schedule are not successful.

Please explain in your own words why it is important to establish a schedule for this course.

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Write your work out on paper.  Don't try to do multi-step problems on your computer keyboard.  It's quicker to write them out then transcribe your work on the keyboard, and the act of writing things down reinforces the learning process.

Make sketches to represent the things you are thinking about and try to organize your thoughts as you go.

You should in any case make notes for future reference as you work.  Also, in some cases a problem will be broken down into a series of questions, and it will be important to maintain the thread of the problem, and keeping at least brief notes will allow you to do so.

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On anything you send the instructor, including but not limited to q_a_ assignments, queries and tests, sufficient documentation is required to allow the instructor to follow your thinking and the details of your solution. An example of good documentation to the question'How long will it take to make $400 at $10 per hour?':

'At $10 / hour it will take $400 / ($10 / hour) = 40 hours to make $400.'

A bad answer to the same question:

'4000'

This is a bad answer first because it's undocumented and second because it's wrong. It would be fairly easy for the instructor to figure out where the 4000 came from--you multiplied when you should have divided, so it might be possible to help you see what you did wrong here, which is usually not the case with undocumented answers on more complicated problems. The more usual case is that I have no clue about what you did wrong and no way to 'reverse-engineer' your solution and address your error. On a test the bad thing about such an answer is that even if you thought correctly through several steps and made only one minor error in your arithmetic, you didn't document the process and there is no way to give you any partial credit.

Note also that if a question can be answered with 'true' or 'false' it doesn't matter whether you put down the right answer or not, if all you put down is 'true' or 'false' it is impossible to tell whether you got the answer by a correct process or by a coin flip, and in this course credit is not give for coin flips. As another example, if a test problem asks for the graph of an expression it is not sufficient to copy the output of your graphing calculator; unless the problem specifically tells you to use the graphing calculator you must document how the characteristics of the graph result from the given expression. Document your answers, show the instructor that you know why the answer is what it is, or you risk getting no credit for the question.

Explain why it's important for you to document your work.

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Don't waste your time misrepresenting what you know.

• Some students copy the homework of other students or receive inappropriate help on homework.
• Some students go through a q_a_ or query program and look at the answers, then essentially copy the answers on the next run.

The instructor notices this pattern but doesn't penalize it, and some students get the 10% or 15% of their grade that's based on homework and daily assignments in this manner. However students who use this strategy don't learn the material well and almost never succeed on the tests that make up the vast majority of their grade.

Please state these ideas in your own words.

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Also it isn't strictly necessary to do all the homework and daily assignments, since test and lab grades are the dominant factors in your final grade (for physics students the lab grade is also essential), and some students do succeed without submitting much work other than tests (and for physics courses labs). However for most students it is necessary to go through the process and learn the material by submitting the assignments and getting instructor feedback.

Please state this in your own words.

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When documenting tests items you need to use the methods appropriate to your course. Just because you can get the right answer in one way or another does not mean that you are using a procedure on which you can build further understanding. It's not a matter of 'my way' vs. 'your way'. The structure of the subject dictates the things you need to understand. If you are taking a test on material which requires you to write and solve equations, for example, then using trial and error to arrive at even a correct solution is not valid and would not receive credit.

State this policy in your own words.

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It is also not valid to justify a solution by copying a picture or a solution from a calculator (unless of course the problem specifies that the calculator is to be used in this manner). It is fine to use a calculator to do your arithmetic, but you must show the steps in solving and equation, and if the solution includes a graph you must explain the behavior of that graph rather than just copying calculator output. The key is that while a calculator can be very useful, operations like entering a function or an equation and copying output from a calculator is not a college-level skill. If the process is part of the course, you have to show the steps of the process. State this policy in your own words.

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&#Good responses. Let me know if you have questions. &#