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Judgment about the progress of your work is based on the quality and depth of critical and constructive thinking exhibited on tests and posts on readings. Your writing and comments should not consist merely of a statement of your religious beliefs or how you feel about the issues. Instead, your comments should express reasons, grounds, or evidence for your agreement or disagreement with the philosophers your read about. Your course grade is determined by averaging the points you achieve from the following scores:
Your final course grade is assigned according to your final average as follows:
Tests: Tests in this course are ``take-home'' tests and are submitted as attachments to email to your instructor. The tests are usually true-false, paragraph-answer, and essay-answer in form. The subject-matter is primarily based on the reading and homework assignments, especially the questions at the beginning of the readings. If you understand the questions at the beginning of the readings, you will do well on tests. If you have difficulty with these questions, then post your queries to the Philosophy Forum discussion board as your ``weekly reading post'' with your best interpretation in order to obtain other insights from the rest of the class.
Important: It is imperative that tests or parts of tests are not copies or paraphrases of notes or tutorials taken from the Web. All writing is to be the student's own work. Many persons believe that it is sufficient to briefly paraphrase the online notes and related Internet sources immediately prior to the due date of the tests. Surprisingly, the lack of understanding of what is read and written in such cases is evident from inadvertent inconsistencies, vague language, a rush to meet a deadline, and poor or inappropriate examples thought up ``on the fly.''
I realize that paraphrasing or copying was successful in high school and still might be in some college courses, but in this course little, if any, credit is given since I am unable to assess reliably your understanding of the philosophies studied.
The tests are neither based on memorized facts nor based on objective information derived from memorized arguments. Instead, the emphasis given in tests is on the operation and active transformation or manipulation of the concepts learned. Occasionally, some particularly difficult optional questions are included for extra credit.
On paragraph and essay questions, be sure to answer with complete sentences; answers provided as lists of phrases or the names of concepts, alone, do not reflect an understanding of the subject and will be given little, if any, credit. Example tests and lecture notes for previous non-WebCT classes are online at http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/. Test Review Worksheets are provided in the Appendix to this syllabus and form a good basis for studying ideas in the readings prior to tests.
Five points are deducted from tests for each of the following:
(1) Test sent to a different email address than that stated above.
(2) Test not sent as attachment to the email.
(3) Test not in a doc, rtf, or txt file type (doc files are preferred)
(4) Test mailed late (per 12 period)
If you word process with iWorks, TextEdit, StarOffice, Open Office, Word Perfect, or some other word processing program, save your document with a doc (or rtf or txt) file extension. To do so with most programs, the process is something like this: When the document is finished and ready to save, on the menu bar near the top of the page in your work processing program, click on ``File'' and when the drop-down menu appears, click on ``Save As.'' Next click on the down-triangle next to ``File Type,'' and click on any one of the following:
The doc extension is preferred.
Your final course grade is assigned according to your final average as described above in Section 3.2 ``Grades.'' The number of hours advised to study given below is usually an accurate guide to how well you will do in this class. If you study only before tests or try to complete tests without prior reading and, your doing well in the course is unlikely. Many students assume they can do well in philosophy without careful reading because they have been able to do so in other high school or college classes. Since these students have become habituated to passing courses without much study, they are often alarmed to discover our philosophy course is substantially different from what they have expected. Your Web course puts a substantial burden on you to take charge of your own learning.
If, at the end of the semester, the mitigating circumstances of substantial hardship this semester caused you to receive low grades, you may petition for withdrawal or retroactive withdrawal from the course. Talk to your advisor for information about this option.
Online quizzes: Online quizzes are provided as study aids only and may be used for self-testing. They are entirely optional and from no part of your grade in this course.
Reading Posts:
Subject of Posts Be sure to make your Subject reflect the content of the post and as precisely as possible. In this manner, specific posts can be much more easily located. Subject titles such as ``Test,'' ``Post,'' ``Question,'' ``Chapter 3,'' or ``Grades'' are much too imprecise. Construct a topic which accurately portrays the content of the message such as "Russell's enlargement of self,'' ``Problem of the Soul in the Socratic Paradox,'' or ``Socrates neglects unconscious thought.''
Rather than just naming the subject as very general category such as the name of a chapter or the name of a philosopher, please take a moment to state the subject more specifically as shown in the examples above.
The comment should give reasons supporting the point of the post. Try to avoid comments such as ``I agree'' or ``I disagree'' unless reasons are given explaining why you agree or disagree. Philosophy is based on rational discourse rather than feelings of likes or dislikes. Do not your religious beliefs unless you are providing rational or empirical evidence or support for your views.
Threaded Messages If your comment is in relation to another post, click on the blue hyperlink ``Reply'' just above the message you are commenting on. You can practice such threaded messages anonymously by not logging in and using the Testing Lounge Area at the top of the Philosophy Forum board.
How to Copy and Paste You can ``copy and paste" your message into the ``Message Body" area if you want to compose it separately in a word processing program or text editor. With your mouse, highlight the text in your word processing program, and for the Copy press the Control Key and at the same time the letter ``C." For the Paste, click the mouse anywhere in the Message Body area, and press the Control Key and at the same time the letter ``V."
Late Posts No credit is given for posts on readings from past or future weeks since the value of posting is for class discussion of current topics.
The WebCT discussion board is not used in this class. Instead, we will be using the Philosophy Forum discussion board on the philosophy server at
http://philosophy.lander.edu/cgi-bin/forum.pl
for which you will need to register as described below.
The Philosophy Forum discussion board is used in our WebCT class for the posting of questions of any kind, reading comments, and replies to comments. The minimum number of comments posted is three comments per week. Only comments about the reading selections count toward your ``Reading Posts'' grade as discussed above in the ``Evaluation'' subsection.
Signing up for the Philosophy Forum discussion board is a completely separate procedure from WebCT and is explained here.
Lost Password: If you lose or forget your password to the Philosophy Forum, click on the Login link on the upper-right of the Philosophy Forum Homepage. At the bottom of the Login page in a box labeled ``Request Password.'' Fill in your username in the username bar, and click the ``Request'' button. Your password will be sent to you via email.
Forgotten Username: If you have forgotten your username to the Philosophy Forum, click on the Login link on the upper-right of the Philosophy Forum Homepage. At the bottom of the Login page in a box labeled ``Request Password,'' fill in your account's email address in the username bar, and click the ``Request'' button. Your username will be sent to you via your account's email.
Forgotten Email Address: If you have forgotten your email address and you have posted to the Philosophy Forum at least once in the past, then find your message on the Philosophy Forum and click on your username. Your ``Profile Page' will load, and your email address will be displayed, if you chose not to hide it when you first registered for the Philosophy Forum.
When you log in to the Philosophy Forum discussion board for the first time, you must enter personal information on your Profile page. To accomplish this, log in to the Philosophy Forum board and click on the ``Option'' link at the top of the page.
When the Profile page loads, you can change your password to a more easily remembered password if you wish to do so. Choose a simple easily remembered password and record the password in your philosophy notebook or in the space provided below:
Username:
Password:
Also, on this Profile page, be sure to enter your real name so that your posts can be credited. Unless your real name is recorded here on the Profile Page, credit cannot be assigned to your posts since the recording program does not have a name to collate with your posts. SeeFigure 3. If you wish to hide your email address when you post, check the appropriate box on this page. If you hide your email address, other students can email you privately. If you do hide your email address, be sure to check your official Lander email account for class-related communications daily even if you do not normally use that email account.
If you click ``Options,'' you can find out how many times you have posted as well as find out about other personal data. To do so, click ``Info'' on the same line as your username on the Profile page. Next, click on the ``Posts'' link for a list of all your messages.
You may access your grades online at any time on the philosophy server (not Lander's WebCT) with a username and password from this course (not your WebCT username and password).
Username: Your username for the course is the first letter of your first name followed by your complete last name in lowercase letters and without spaces. For example ``Lauren Bouchett Satterfield'' would have the login username of ``lsatterfield'' with no limitation of number of letters as with some login programs.
Password: Your password is your Lander L-number (without hyphen). Type an uppercase L followed by eight digits: e.g., Lxxxxxxxx.
Where to Log In: From the Philosophy Homepage click on the yellow ``Introduction to Philosophy" link under the gray heading entitled ``Class Grades" as in Figure 9. When the Grades Login page loads do the following:
Our course is not difficult if you keep up with the assigned work.
A good place to see how to study in our course is the ``Notes on How to Study'' on the Web at
http://philosophy.lander.edu/study.html.
If I do my job correctly, our philosophy course will be one of the most valuable in your university career.
The following policies are explicitly stated here because these policies help protect fairness of the course evaluation for the class as a whole. Some of these policies are generally assumed in most classes at Lander University.
If you plagiarize from any work including the online notes, you will receive a ``0'' for your answer. Almost every semester since this online course has been taught, some students do not pass this course because they copy work from the online notes or the Web without proper citation. Also, please do not attempt to submit tests completed after the due date and claim the email attachment did not go through in time. Computer and server logs clearly show dates documents are processed, saved and email sent. Any such academic dishonesty will result in a ``0'' assigned to the work and possible failure in the course.
Telephone: +1 864 388 8885
E-mail: studentwellness@lander.edu
For on campus students, the Academic Success Center in room Learning Center 340 offers testing accommodations for students with disability who need extra time as well as a quiet room for testing during the year. Notify your instructor prior to the test date.
Center Telephone +1 864 388 8308 Web address http://www.lander.edu/asc/is-home.html
Also, these Websites will provide information in case of cancellations, delay of classes, or the closing of the university:
Lander University:
http://www.lander.edu
State Office of Human Resources:
http://ohr.sc.gov/OHR/OHR-index.phtm
Appendices
