CS COMP 149 - “How to Solve It”
Semester One Week One
| Rubrics Groups Evaluations Score Sheets Portfolio Projects Presentations Role of English How to Solve It |
Honesty
and Truth: YOU will be giving YOU your "grade." In order to do this well, you should keep scoresheets on your performance and on those YOU evaluate. You may wish to print them for access in the classroom. Twice each semester, along with your self evaluations, you will also turn in these scoresheets to be checked for completeness. How does this work? By using a combination of rubrics, self and peer evaluations and a series of critique sheets you will determine the quality of your presentations, class participation, projects and portfolios and write about what you did. Twice each semester, you will also write formal evaluations where, with the guidance of a list of questions and a rubric, YOU will also determine a "grade" for the period. In short, YOU will be giving YOU your "grade." (See: Evaluations) In your groups, you will assess yourselves and your group members on the quality and degree of participation in your group work. Everyone in a group gets the same grade, a group will rise or fall together. Groups will create several projects each semester and present them. Cheating Cheating is strictly forbidden; anyone attempting this may fail the course and/or face administrative or classroom disciplinary action. If you are honest with yourself and the rest of us, if you do the work you are assigned, if you are helpful to your groups and do your homework, you should never feel the need to cheat Cheating is defined as the act of; "depriving of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud, influencing or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice, practicing fraud or trickery, violating rules dishonestly (as at cards or on an examination)." (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary online version) Honesty If you make a poor effort or no effort during the course and write about this in your self evaluation, you might get credit for honesty, but, honesty does not count for many points. However, if you do not have good quality evaluations or critiques, if you do not help your group members in your projects, if you do not come to class on a regular basis and if you seldom or never participate in class Q & A sessions and discussions, you should be HONEST and give yourself a low score. If you could not give your time or ability to your group members, then you may be a "slacker" or simply lazy and are not assisting your group members nor fulfilling course requirements. Assessment A "grade" determines a ranking on a competitive scale, which means that you are competing against your classmates instead of working with them, therefore a "grade" is not cooperative. An assessment is what you can learn about yourself if you use it wisely. An assessment is a snapshot in time of the progress you are making. An assessment is neutral, it is neither competitive nor is it cooperative. For this class, I hope that all of you work together to help one another learn, and that you will only "compete" as a means of seeing who can be the best at helping your classmates learn better. Truthfulness I believe that if you are TRUTHFUL with yourself, you should now be adult and responsible enough to give yourself your own scores and write good reasons why in your self-evaluations. Unfortunately it is possible that someone may not tell the truth about themselves, about the quality of their work or their participation in class. A lack of TRUTHFULNESS is something both your group peers and your “guide” may overrule. Your truthfulness about what you do or did can be assesed by how well you partcipate in class and during your group project presentations. Each of you will be asked, by class members, regular questions or asked to answer a question about something in your daily writing, notes, group work, interactions, participation, etc. Each day someone different will be selected randomly to specifically participate. Of course, anyone can and should be prepared to participate, therefore, you should at any time be prepared to stand up in front of us all to tell us what you know, to be questioned and to ask questions. Attendance Everyone will have daily attendance, class participation and project completion marking sheets. Participation includes class Q & A, your daily notes or summaries about what happened in class, what things you learned that day and what were you confused about. I am required by the University to take attendance. Attendance should also be taken by YOU, for YOURSELF daily so you can judge the truthfulness of how many sessions you attended and how many times you allowed yourself to be available to participate in class. Attendance will be taken into account if you have problems with your group work, your projects, your writing and your final self evaluations. Keep that in mind every time you decide to skip a class. IF you are truthful and honest, you should not be afraid nor shy about this process. This is a good environment to make mistakes and we ALL make mistakes. Not always is there a simple RIGHT or WRONG answer, often there will only be YOUR answer. Always make an attempt at a good answer by thinking about the question before you answer, using critical thinking, questioning, IF/THEN and any other means. Disagreement or Dishonesty If there is disagreement about the truthfulness or honesty of a self evaluation, we may gather all or selected assessment documents from portfolios and they will be compared by the teacher and a student committee for determining the accuracy of the self evaluation. If it becomes necessary, we may create a small committee of classroom peers who would judge upon the merits of the quality of the work of a contested class member. |
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 Week 11 Week 12 End of Semester 01 Introduction 02 Why a University? 03 Course Criteria 04 In Class Writing 05 Plagiarism 06 Groups 07 Check Our Progress 08 Discovery Learning 09 Honesty and Truth 10 Readings |