The
evaluation for the course will be based on these
items, out of a semester total of 400 points:
Work due on a given day is due at the start of class, unless otherwise
noted. Missing a tutorial costs one full grade. Late (even barely late)
work loses the point equivalent of one full grade (=10%), and a further grade
for each additional twenty-four hours of lateness. Keep in mind this cost when
deliberating about taking more time in which to complete a paper.
Attendance Policy
For at least this reason, regular attendance at, and
participation in, class are required, whether in person or via video link.
(Furthermore, it is impossible to do well in this course without regular
attendance, and difficult without regular participation.)
For this course,
everyone is allowed three unexcused absences per
semester. (The College policy is to allow two—thus, I
am out of the gates already 50% more generous than the College!) For this
course, six unexcused absences will result in failing the course, despite the
quality of the rest of the student’s work. (And merely
emailing the professor prior to class to say “I won’t be in class today” does
not automatically suffice for an absence to count as being excused. “Expected”
is not a synonym for “excused.”)
That having been
said, this semester is likely to be a singularly unusual one, and I will be
accessible for us to talk (or “talk”) about needs you might have—whether
consistently throughout the semester or just for certain
stretches within it. I have no interest in incentivizing you to make this
course (although “my baby!”) THE most important concern in your life. Yes, this
will be a rockin’ course, but these days the gods seem to be distracted with
other matters and have taken their eyes off the road. Hence, we find ourselves
having to balance priorities that would normally be no-brainers.
This attendance
policy holds regardless of whether one is attending in person or online. For
those attending online, the aforementioned rationale for
requiring attendance for this course entails that one’s video be activated.
This preserves the face-to-face engagement with each other. You have sensibly
chosen a small college. If you had wanted to be facelessly
anonymous, you could have chosen to enroll at Enormous U. Directly relating to
each other about matters of (I’m sure you’ll come to agree) great importance to
us as individuals and as members of communities is the best of college
experiences, and can’t be subverted by a dinky virus one 8-billionth of a meter
in diameter. (Requests for waivers to this video-on requirement can be made to the instructor on grounds of, for example,
technical obstacles to video streaming.) Otherwise, attending online with video
off counts as an absence.
For the health and
safety of our community, within all academic buildings, including this
classroom, all students are required to wear face coverings over the nose and
mouth and comply with social distancing to the extent possible. Students who
are unable or unwilling to wear a face covering are required to enroll in the
remote option of this course. Failure to comply will result in your being excused from the class session, subsequent class
meetings, and potentially from the residential campus experience.
Tutorials
The tutorial papers will be run
as paired online tutorials. You will be scheduled in
pairs to read your paper to me and to the other student. We will discuss your
paper with you, interrupting you more than once. Then the other student will
read their paper in the same way. So that we may follow along as you read,
ensure that the other student has access to your paper. Realize that it is your
paper which will be graded, not your reading of it or
your answering any questions which I or the other student may bring up. The
purpose of having you read the paper to me is that I can give you most comments
directly and suggest ways to improve your future work. This is much easier for
me to do and much more helpful to you than having you read my comments in dried
ink on a dead piece of paper. Because I will have to schedule many tutorial
sessions, I am canceling class for the days during which the tutorials will be
held.
You will have the opportunity to submit a substantive re-write (that is,
not only correcting mechanical errors—see next paragraph) of your first paper,
and the grade recorded will be the average of the grade on the first submission
and on the second submission.
Writing
Since writing is central to the course, both in
reading others' and in creating your own, respect for writing will manifest
itself even at the level of writing mechanics. You will be expected to take
stylistic and mechanical concerns most seriously in your three papers. As a
motivational aid to this end, you will be allowed two grammatical, spelling, or
punctuation mistakes per page (partial pages counting as full), after which you
will lose one point for each mistake. For example, if you have a 44-point paper
of five pages, and you have made thirteen mechanical errors, then you will
receive a 41 for the paper. N.B.: the same mistake (not just similar)
repeated will count as one mistake. You will be allowed to submit a revised
version with the mechanical errors corrected, and in these cases you will be
assigned the average of your original and revised grade.
You might consider spending a bit of time at my writing site.
Few would fail to benefit.
Stoic Week journal
As we discuss Stoicism, you are to keep a daily, reflective journal as
if you were a Stoic, though alive today. You will try living as a Stoic, and
keep a journal of your reflections of where Stoicism seemed easy to adopt,
where the challenges were, what this tells us about Stoicism, or what this
tells you about you. (You might even
want to use these four headings for each day’s entry, together with any other
headings you find useful.)
If you already consider yourself a Stoic, then the only added work of
this assignment is the writing.
Bear in mind that keeping a reflective journal is not the same as a
keeping a mere diary.
You might reflect on ways in which you behaved Stoically,
and where this was for the good. Or where it turned
out poorly. Or ways in which you didn’t measure up to
a Stoic, but where your course of action was the better choice.
Distinguishing journals will incorporate passages from our reading (with page
citation) into their reflections.
Personal
electronics
Except for any portion of the
course that will be conducted by anyone online, the
use of laptops in class is not allowed.
This seminar requires a
free-flowing exchange of ideas, between you and the authors, as well as among
us. Laptops create a literal vertical barrier among us, so ebooks
should be accessed in class by use of flat-laying devices
(like tablets, e-readers, or phones). I will consider a waiver for students who
can access their ebooks only on a laptop, or for
those with documented needs of which I’ve been notified by
the Office of Academic Services.
Unless being used for accessing the course readings, or for any portion of this
course that is online, cell phones should be stowed away, and not simply on the
table, even if turned completely off. “Why,” you ask? Well, recent studies
indicate the distracting effect of even a cell phone not
one’s own, laying on a nearby table. In fact, of even a
drawing or a thought of a cell phone.
So I hereby prohibit you during class even to think of a cell phone.
As for note-taking, consult this
study, which found superior recall in students who took notes by hand
compared to those who took them by typing, and this
recent article sums up some of the research findings.
Those unable to abide by these
rules need to find themselves another class.
Students with documented disabilities
“Students are admitted to St. Mary’s College based on their potential for
academic success, irrespective of physical or learning disabilities.
Administrative staff and faculty work cooperatively to assist students
with disabilities in their educational endeavors and adjustments to the College
community. The Office of Academic Services works to ensure that
educational programs are accessible to all qualified students. Student
with physical or learning disabilities should contact the Office of Academic
Services for specific information and assistance regarding potential special
needs.” --SMCM catalog
Academic integrity
As contagion
Of sickness makes sickness,
Contagion of trust can make trust.
--Marianne
Moore, American poet
from “In Distrust
of Merits” (1943)
Academic integrity: The College’s definitions and policies
on this matter are laid out here. Ignorance of such matters is no excuse.
Good (and short!) tutorials on topics like samples of
acceptable and unacceptable paraphrases can be found
at a page put up by Indiana University: https://plagiarism.iu.edu/
Cornell has a quiz you can take to see how well you
understand what sorts of material needs to be sourced: http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/exercises.cfm
(Click on “Introduction” on the left-hand side if you want to see their
discussion leading up to the quiz.)
Grading standards
Adapted from Maxine Rodbury,
“A Grading Rubric,” Harvard Writing
Project Bulletin, p. 11: https://www.usfca.edu/uploadedFiles/Destinations/Office_and_Services/Academic_Support/Learning_and_Writing_Center/HWP.responding.pdf [accessed 30
March 2015]
a grade of A
Excellent in every way (this is not the same as perfect).
This is an ambitious, perceptive essay that grapples with interesting, complex
ideas; responds discerningly to counter-arguments, and explores well-chosen
evidence revealingly. The discussion enhances, rather than underscores, the
reader’s and writer’s knowledge (it doesn’t simply repeat what has been
taught). There is a context for all the ideas; someone outside the class would
be enriched, not confused, by reading the essay. Its beginning opens up, rather
than flatly announces, its thesis. Its end is something more than a summary.
The language is clean, precise, often elegant. The
reader feels surprised, delighted, changed. There’s something new here for the
reader, something only the essay’s writer could have written and explored in
this particular way. The writer’s stake in the material is obvious.
a grade of B
A piece of writing that reaches high and achieves many
of its aims. The ideas are solid and progressively explored, but some thin
patches require more analysis or some stray thoughts don’t fit in. The language
is generally clear and precise but occasionally not. The evidence is relevant,
but there may be too little; the context for the evidence may not be
sufficiently explored, so that the reader has to make some of the connections
that the writer should have made clear for the reader.
OR: A piece of
writing that reaches less high than an A essay but thoroughly achieves its
aims. This is a solid essay the reasoning and argument of which may nonetheless
be
rather routine. (In this case the limitation is conceptual.)
a grade of C
A piece of writing that has real problems in one of
these areas: conception (there’s at least one main idea but it’s fuzzy and hard
to get to); structure (confusing); use of evidence (weak or non-existent—the connections
among the ideas and the evidence are not made or are presented without context,
or add up to platitudes or generalizations): language (the sentences are often
awkward, dependent on unexplained abstractions, sometimes contradict each
other). The essay may not move forward
but rather may repeat its main points, or it may touch upon many (and
apparently unrelated) ideas without exploring any of them in sufficient
depth. Punctuation, spelling, grammar,
paragraphing, and transitions may be a problem.
OR: An essay that is largely plot summary or
“interpretive summary” of the text, but is written without major problems.
OR: An essay that is chiefly a personal reaction to
something. Well-written, but scant intellectual content—mostly unsupported
opinion.
lower grades
These are efforts that are wildly shorter than they
ought to be to grapple seriously with ideas.
OR: Those that are extremely problematic in many of
the areas mentioned above: aims, structure, use of evidence, language, etc.
OR: Those that do not come close to addressing the
expectations of the assignment.
Send me mail: mstaber at smcm dot edu
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Go to Michael Taber's home page.
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