After you’ve read through this entire syllabus and the other documents in the General Course Information module, click on the Thinkwell content link on the left-hand navigation bar of our Canvas course site. Thinkwell is the publisher of the online text we will be using. The first time you do this, you’ll be asked to purchase access with a credit or debit card (cheapest option), enter an access code you’ve already purchased at the NCTC bookstore, or get temporary access for 14 days.
Once you’ve passed the purchasing part, expand the first chapter, Orientation and Getting Started Materials, by clicking on the triangle to the left of the chapter title. Once you have looked through all of the Orientation and Getting Started Materials, you are ready to start learning the course material.
Each chapter will expand to sections, each section expands to subsections, and each subsection expands to reveal the learning materials for that subsection (Book pages, Video Lesson, Video sample solutions, & Interactive Practice). See the example below.
I highly recommend you watch each video lesson and do the interactive practice. Each video lesson is done by Professor Ed Burger, the author of the text, and averages about 7 minutes in length. The Interactive Practice consists of 1 – 4 problems that can be done unlimited times. These are not part of your grade, but will give you feedback as to whether or not you understand the material. The Book pages are just what they say – online text pages. You may find that you like reading through these in addition to watching the videos. The Video sample solutions are a handful of additional examples you can view for each subsection.
At the end of each section, you will find a Practice Quiz (Not for Grade) and Practice Book Exercises. Both of these are always available and may be done unlimited times. The Practice Quiz problems will change some on each attempt. The Practice Book Exercises are static – they never change. I recommend you attempt the Practice Quiz at the end of each section and read the solutions for feedback before you try the corresponding Graded Quiz for that section. See Graded Quiz Information & Procedures, further down in this document, for more details.
Exams Information & Procedures:
The exams are not online. They are pencil & paper and must be proctored.
You must bring to each exam: pencils, a scientific calculator (non-graphing), and a photo ID.
No notes of any kind will be allowed during exams.
The exams are given on Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., on the NCTC Corinth campus (room TBD) according to the following schedule:
Exam 1: Saturday, September 30
Exam 2: Saturday, October 28
Exam 3: Saturday, November 18
Final Exam: Saturday, December 9
These dates are tentative and subject to change.
Students who are unable to attend the above primary exam dates & times on the Corinth campus may, with the instructor’s approval, test at another NCTC campus testing center, or at another institution’s official testing center. These alternate testing arrangements must be communicated to the instructor at least 2 weeks prior to the primary testing date and may be approved at the instructor’s discretion. If approved for an alternate testing location, the student must schedule the exam on any day Tuesday – Friday the week before the primary Saturday date for that exam.
Contact information for the NCTC Counseling & Testing Centers may be found at:
http://www.nctc.edu/StudentServices/CounselingTesting/Makeupexams.aspx
Exams will generally be graded in about a week. Once graded, the grades will be posted in our Canvas course site.
There will be a graded online quiz for each section we cover. For example, your first quiz will be over section 2.1 Solving Linear Equations. All quizzes will be available from the first day of the semester, but must be done by the posted due date at 11:59 p.m. Students may work ahead as far as they like. Manage your time & schedule so that you can complete the quizzes ahead of time when necessary. There will be no make-up quizzes.
There is no limit on the number of times you can take each quiz prior to its due date. Each quiz will consist of approximately 10 – 15 questions. The entire quiz must be submitted all at once; however, each time you attempt a quiz, you’ll only have to rework the problems you missed on the previous attempt. You should definitely try to take each quiz until you get every problem correct. Since notes are not allowed when taking exams, you should work the quiz problems until you can do them without notes.
The links to the graded quizzes, along with the corresponding due dates, are all found under the Assignments link on the left hand navigation bar in our course Canvas site.
Note that Closed Captioning and detailed transcripts are available for the Video Lessons:
The accessibility statement for Canvas is available at http://www.canvaslms.com/accessibility .
Thinkwell runs on the same Canvas platform, so this statement also applies to Thinkwell.
If you have any additional needs in order to access the course content, please contact me.
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