Online Course Guidelines:
Working online has its benefits, but there are some drawbacks. The first is that everything must be read. Instructions, assignments, and all correspondence. If you struggle with the written word, online courses may be difficult. You can't simply get a quick verbal clarification, either. If you work at 2am and you can't follow the instructions, you are going to have to wait a long time to get clarification. So, the following guidelines should make the online course experience better:

1. Read the instructions. If they are unclear, read them one more time. If they still seem confusing, ask a question of the class--either myself or another student may be able to explain. If it's a really unclear instruction, I'll probably re-write it.

2. Plagiarism is cheating, and I keep an eye out for it. With Wikipedia and other online sources, it's very easy to get sucked into copying and pasting text. Here is how to avoid plagiarism:

Instead of copying other people's work, use your own words, cite personal
examples that demonstrate the principle or point you are trying to make, and if (and only if) that is insufficient to make your point, either provide direct quotes or summaries of direct quotes with giving proper credit to the source. This usually includes providing a reference so that the reader can find the source his or herself.

From the course Syllabus: "... Plagiarism is submitting a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else
and presented as being your own work, or taking someone's words or ideas and using them as if they were your own without giving due credit. ..."

3. Discussion Guidelines: Understand and practice Miller's law.

Miller's Law comes in two parts:
"To understand what another person is saying, you must assume that it is true."

The second:
". . . try to imagine what [that truth] could be true of."

The first part gets you to listen to (or in our case read) what is being said. Most people don't listen as well as they could. They instead wait to pounce during a pause in speech and say what is on their minds instead of relating to what was just said. Assume (don't accept) what they say as truth, and you will naturally begin to really listen. This takes practice, but many arguments have been avoided by following this simple rule..

The 2nd part of Miller's law helps you understand what people are saying. In other words, think about the consequences of the the listener's 'truth.' Questions will naturally arise which will create more interesting and fruitful dialogue.

Regardless if the speaker seems wrong, "really listen to him, without judgment, and try to figure out how he could think that way," says George A. Miller, Princeton's James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Emeritus.

4. Writing Guidelines: Generally I believe less is more. More enjoyable to read, and more likely to improve your thinking and writing.

• I expect that when you post an assignment or a question that it's not a first draft.

• I expect that before posting anything, that you read your post out loud, and if that's not possible (because you are somewhere that makes it awkward), you should read it out loud anyway. :-) Mouth the words if you have to. Some of you will be very good writers and do this unconsciously, or have written so much that you don't need to do this step. But my experience is that many students struggle with writing and I know this to be of help.

• I expect that when you write you try to use the concepts from the book whenever possible.

• I expect you to use correct grammar and spelling. Texting is not allowed for assignments. If you want to use shorthand while chatting with each other, that's fine. But all graded work and correspondence to me ought to be in the correct format.

• For advice from George Orwell click here.
  

5. When sending an email or posting a message, please use informative subject lines. It is easy to forget to update or change subject lines, but doing so does several things. For one, it provides context to the reader. For two, it helps searching for messages. For three, it makes it easier to organize the discussion threads.

6. Be sure that when you reply to an email or a message post that you include the material of that post. Most email programs, by default, include quoted material.

7. Most correspondence ought to occur through ANGEL. There may be a power outage at school which shuts down the ANGEL server, but otherwise we should keep correspondence through ANGEL.

8. Don't use attachments. Copy and paste your assignments into your message box. Attachments take up too much space and are cumbersome to use and grade. Of course, sometimes you won't have an option, for example, a PDF document that you want others to see.

 9. If you find a link that is "bad," let me know by actually copy the link and sending it to me. Otherwise, I have no idea where to begin looking.

10. You may not look at exams early.  When you "begin" an exam, a timer starts and does not stop.  You must complete the exam in the allotted time, usually around 1.25 hours.  So, if you click on the exam on Tuesday to get a little "peek" to study with the intention of taking the exam on Friday, you will get a zero for the exam.

11. Quizzes are not graded for accuracy, but by honest attempts. Your answer is compared to an answer key character by character; if you use a different character, like a comma where the key uses a semicolon, you get the question wrong, but this doesn't hurt your score. You can then judge for yourself whether you need more studying.

12. Learning Objectives are not to be turned in. They are to be used by you however you see fit. They do help guide reading though, because the vast majority of test content is culled from the learning objectives. If you take a look at the learning objectives first, you may have to read less than a full chapter.

13. When you have a question, you should not immediately send a note to the instructor. Instead, re-read the instructions, and then post to the class. In you post, describe what you are confused about and what you have done to answer the question yourself. The one exception to this rule is if you have personal questions about grades or circumstances that are not appropriate for the class, you can send a note to the instructor.