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PSC160 INT - Memo : "Homework" Questions |
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The course is divided into four sections (see far right column of class web page). Under each section are dead links for sixteen homework worksheets. Each week, students will submit a single homework "worksheet" to the instructor via e-mail. The links to each worksheet will generally be made "live" on Sunday evenings and the associated deadlines will be the following Friday, by midnight. Each worksheet will contain questions from the text, in the order that the material appears in the text. The questions are also generally distributed so as to spread the material evenly throughout each section of the course and ensure students are reading on a regular basis. |
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Format - Your submission should contain both the questions and answers and should never be in the form of an e-mail attachment. |
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Submission - Answers should be submitted to PSC160INT@aol.com and the subject line should contain ONLY your last name. |
| Credit - The deadline for submissions will be at midnight each Friday. If your submission arrives after the deadline, I will inform you and you will receive no credit unless, upon later review, the details of the submission clearly document that the submission was made before the deadline (but "bounced" elsewhere). There is nothing you can say or send to me that will affect this decision, so there is no need to offer assistance. I will make the decision on my own. You should simply be patient and confident - if you did actually send it before the deadline. If there are complications with respect to the submission of assignments via e-mail, I will simply advise you to acquire some other e-mail service. Reliable e-mail is a course prerequisite. |
| Late Homework Assignments - The instructor will in no circumstance accept a late homework assignment. Acceptance of such assignments is non-negotiable. First, as you will see, the five day period is more than adequate time to complete each assignment. Second, individual assignments represent only a very small portion of a portion of the overall grade. Thus, their mathematical impact is minimal. Finally, in most instances, I have no real way of distinguishing legitimate from non-legitimate explanations for missing assignments. |
| Guidelines - Before submitting assignments, students should carefully read, and habitually scan the document found here. |
| Questions - As would be the case with any test (on or off campus), students can receive an explanation of the scoring on each and every assignment by simply requesting an explanation after the scoring is complete. The explanations I offer will come in the form of two steps. In the first step, I will identify the particular questions that were scored as "incorrect" and provide a brief (one or two word) explanation for my scoring. The invitation is for you to then revisit the question, your answer and the material in the text, in order to understand why the scoring was the way that it was. In most instances, you should be able to identify the weakness of almost all of your answers between my singling out specific questions, my brief explanation for the scoring and reading the text. If questions still remain, however, let me know which specific questions you were unable to figure out and, in a second step, I will provide a more full explanation. |
| Payoff - First, homework questions are designed to make sure that you are reading the textbook on a regular basis. There is far too much material in the text and the tests are far too demanding to "cram." Second, the material emphasized in the homework questions will be used in the creation of the tests. Indeed, there is usually a very high correlation between homework scores and test scores. As is the case with the questions in the student Study Guide, test questions will focus on the material that is highlighted in the homework questions. While you very well may see the exact question appear on a test, you should not count on it. Focus on the material not the form of the question (or associated answers). Finally, the percentage of homework questions which are answered correctly will constitute 20 percent of the overall course grade. |