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course PHY 201
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, followed by Summary of Main Ideas in Module 1. You should very briefly scan this summary. There is no reason it should make sense to you right now, but as you work through the assignments in Module 1 it is recommended that following each week's assignments you scan through the summary, which will make more and more sense with each additional assignment.
Below the heading for the Module you will see a note indicating when the Major Quiz for Module 1 is to be completed.
The course is divided into four Modules. Scroll down the page and locate the headings for Modules 2, 3 and 4.
Briefly state when the Major Quiz is to be completed, and briefly describe how you intend to use the Module Summaries.
**** Your response (insert your response beginning in the next line; the next line is blank and doesn't include the #$... prompt):
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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):
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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):
I understand that this course will require me to work out problems even though I may not know how to do them yet. Then by note taking, reading etc I will grasp a better understanding of each concept. I will also be utilizing lots of different material as the class progresses.
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When you submit this document you will have complete the first part of Orientation Step 4.
Your next activity will be Orientation Step 5."