Course Title:

College Algebra

Course Prefix & Number: 

MATH1314

Section Number: 

311

Semester/Year:

Spring 2018

Semester Credit Hours:

3

Lecture Hours:

48

Lab Hours:

Course Description (NCTC Catalog): In-depth study and applications of polynomial, rational, radical, exponential and logarithmic functions, and systems of equations using matrices. Additional topics such as sequences, series, probability, and conics may be included.       

Course Prerequisite(s): Meet TSI college-readiness standard for College Algebra; or equivalent

Required or Recommended Course Materials:

Thinkwell College Algebra access (may be purchased directly via the Thinkwell content link in Canvas or through the NCTC bookstore)

Scientific calculator, TI-30X IIS is recommended

Graphing calculators and phone calculators will not be allowed on exams.

Name of Instructor:

Ronald Bautch

Campus/Office Location:

Flower Mound Room 107

Office Hours:

Flm    MW       9:30 - 11:00 am

Flm    MW     12:30 - 3:00 pm

Flm    TR         7:00 - 9:30 am

Flm    TR        11:00 - 12:30 pm

Flm    TR         2:00 - 3:00 pm

Other times by appointment

Telephone Number:

940-498-6242

E-mail Address:

Contact Through Canvas     or    rbautch@nctc.edu

At the successful completion of this course the student will be able to:

1

Demonstrate and apply knowledge of properties of functions, including domain and range, operations, compositions, and inverses.

2

Recognize and apply polynomial, rational, radical, exponential and logarithmic functions and solve related equations.

3

Apply graphing techniques.

4

Evaluate all roots of higher degree polynomial and rational functions.

5

Recognize, solve, and apply systems of linear equations using matrices.

# of Graded Course Elements

Graded Course Elements

Percentage or Point Values

3

Semester Exams

300 pts

1

Final Exam

100 pts

33

Quizzes

50 pts

Your grade will consist of 3 intra-semester exams, a comprehensive final exam, and graded quizzes.  Each exam, the final exam, and your quiz average will be weighted as 20% of your grade.

Category         Weight                                       Grading Scale

Exams (3)          60%                                            90 - 100% A

Final Exam        20%                                            80 – 89%   B

Quizzes              20%                                            70 – 79%   C

                                                                               60 – 69%  D

                                                                                0 –  59%  F

There will be no make-up exams or quizzes.   If your final exam score is higher than the lowest of the 3 intra-semester exams, then the final exam score will replace the lowest of the 3 exam grades.  In this case, the final exam score will be weighted 40% of your overall grade.

If your grade is not within ½ percentage point of the upper grade it will not be rounded up.

All quizzes are due at 11:59 p.m. on the assigned due date.

Sample tests are posted on Canvas/Modules, they will not be counted for credit.

Exam, quiz, & homework scores will be posted on Canvas.

Your Final Letter Grade will be posted on My NCTC website.

Exams will graded and scores posted on Canvas within one week.

The grading policy may be amended during the semester at the instructor’s discretion.

I know each student within the semester will have their own specific challenges that they face privately but each one of you need to execute each task as best as you can and soldier on.  This is life. Please do not ask for “grace” or extensions because this is unfair to those who kept their challenges to themselves and did not ask for this.  In short, complete tasks

·  March 12 – 17, 2018 Spring Break - College Closed

·  Thursday, April 05, 2018  Last day to drop a class with a grade of W

·  May 08 – 11, 2018   FINAL EXAMS

At no point within the semester should students contact me with respect to them dropping.  It is a highly personal decision that can only be made by each student and their academic advisors.

·  Questions on the homework will be discussed at the beginning of each class.  Homework is very important and it is absolutely necessary for successful completion of the course.  Mathematics is not a spectator sport.

·  All cell phones, i-phones, etc. must be kept out of sight, in your car, purse, backpack, etc.  You may be asked to leave for the day if your phone goes off, even on test days, for your first violation.  You may be dropped from the course on your second violation.  You may be dropped from the course if you are at any time caught text-messaging and/or checking emails.  In addition, students are not allowed to study for other classes, read newspapers, and /or sleep in class.

·  BE COURTEOUS TO YOUR FELLOW CLASSMATES.

·  The instructor reserves the right to amend the syllabus at any time during the semester.

·  Any announcements/information disseminated during class will take precedence over the

    syllabus.

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, February 17, 2018

Exam 2:         Saturday, March 24, 2018

Exam 3:         Saturday, April 21, 2018

Final Exam:   Saturday, May 05, 2018

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, and the solutions will be posted in the Exam Solutions module.  You can pick up your graded exams on the Corinth campus, room 331, Monday – Thursday 7:30 am – 7:00 pm, Friday 8:00 am – 3:30 pm.  If you e-mail me, I can arrange for you to pick up an exam at another NCTC campus, or to have it scanned and e-mailed to you. 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, and the solutions will be posted in the Exam Solutions module.  You can pick up your graded exams on the Corinth campus, room 331, Monday – Thursday 7:30 am – 7:00 pm, Friday 8:00 am – 3:30 pm.  If you e-mail me, I can arrange for you to pick up an exam at another NCTC campus, or to have it scanned and e-mailed to you.

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.

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.

I will check emails periodically Monday thru Friday and will try to respond within 24 hours.  However, I will likely check my email at least once per day when I am not on campus.  Email will not be checked over the weekend, holidays, or after 4 pm on any weekday.  Although Canvas is available to students 24/7, it is unrealistic to expect that the instructors will be.  Keep in mind if there are any emails that are urgent over the weekend TRY not to panic.  The solution probably can be resolved quickly upon the beginning of the week. 

Reasons why I will not reply to your email:

-Question can be answered within the syllabus

-If emails resemble text messages to your buddies

-Include substantially poor grammar

-Not coherent

-Extra credit to boost grade

-Future point totals to make a certain grade; do your own math

-Asking for more time to do an assignment

-Asking for special consideration over other students for any reason

-Questions regarding an assignment with less than 12 hours before a due-date

Be mindful of the tone that is presented in emails.  If it is aggressive, unprofessional, or is academically offensive in anyway, the professor will not reply.  Know that the student’s name may be given to the Associate Dean of Denton County Campuses for further review. 

In an effort to keep everyone within this class on an equal playing field regarding IT issues, everyone will be held to the same process and standards. 

Be sure that you are doing all of your assignments on a reliable computer with sufficient battery life and appropriate Internet connectivity.   The instructor cannot help instances of computers “shutting down,” “crashing,” “running slow,” or “electrical outages due to a storm,” etc.  Be mindful of this before you begin any assignments.   The burden rests solely on the student if there is a problem mid-assignment and it truly rests with someone other than the student, you will have to:

1.Create an e-ticket at  http://www.nctc.edu/eLearning_Department/Support.aspx

Select “submit a request.” 

Describe the problem to the e-Learning Department and produce the evidence to support your technological issue.  Include screenshots via computer or phone of the error message or issue.  In addition, include dates and times within the screenshots or photos.

2. Forward the emailed response to the instructor from the e-Learning Department if there is evidence to support your claim.  That includes the response that the Canvas help desk delivered with the overwhelming amount of data regarding your issue to indicate that the technical difficulty was through no fault of the students’.  Do not email the instructor if the e-Learning Department cannot verify your technical difficulty.  Please include your “request number” in parenthesis which can be found in the email from e-Learning.

3. Then the instructor will gather all evidence from the student, e-Learning, and from the student activity from within Canvas to make an appropriate decision in moving forward with the request to re-open assignments.  If students do not provide a good defense, the instructor will not likely re-open any assignments. 

4. Finally, THE INSTRUCTOR WILL LOOK AT THE ENTIRE RECORD OF THE STUDENTS’ ACTIVITY ON CANVAS.  If the student makes a false claim regarding technical difficulties, they should expect to be dropped from the course at the point of the offense.  This is child’s play to look at students’ Canvas activity so avoid being inventive of any fictitious IT stories.

On a personal note:   This syllabus is our contract; it cannot and will not be amended by students for personal issues.  This is not limited to birthdays, deaths, hospital / incarceration stays, or minor holidays.  Everyone is held to the same standard in this class.

Decreased stress for this class can be traced back to utilizing a calendar system (for all assignment due dates), working on a reliable computer, and not waiting until the last minute to get started on assignments (cheating, plagiarism, creating fictitious I.T. stories, and sloppy work can get the very best under these conditions). 

Overall, I would respect a student more if they honestly could not complete an assignment rather than to invent creative stories, blame others, or recycle assignments or copy other work.  In short, these issues just waste my time and could get the student in more academic trouble and potentially expelled from college.

Division Chair :

Dr. Elizabeth Howell

Office Location:

Corinth 236

Telephone Number:

940-498-6209

E-mail Address:

ehowell@nctc.edu

Instructional Dean:

Sara Flusche

Office Location:

Gainesville 1306

Telephone Number:

940.668.3351

E-mail Address:

sflusche@nctc.edu