 Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. The purpose of this video is to walk you through the syllabus and explain what will be going on over the course of the semester. And this is what I would do the first day of class in a traditional class, and for this class this semester we do have a decent percentage of the class that will be taking the class remotely, so I wanted to provide this information online through this recording as well. So this is my contact information up at the top here and how you can get a hold of me, and the best way to do that is through my email address here. I'm not based on the Stevenson campus, so email is the best way to get through to me. I will happily have office hours if you need to talk to me either before or after class time, but otherwise email is the best way to get a hold of me. Now the course information, this is the Introduction to Astronomy, and this is the course Physics 125. And the classroom locations are here on the Owings Mills North Campus, and we have a lecture classroom and separate classrooms for the lab. Now the lecture times are noted here as well, and what we can see is that the times are actually slightly changed from what is here. We actually start at 5.05 p.m. and end at 6.55 p.m. And this is because Stevenson has adjusted certain class times because of the virus, so to spread it for other people out moving and not all classes changing at the same time. Since we're in an odd classroom for lecture we will start five minutes later and five minutes later than the times that are scheduled. We also have a course description here, which explains what we're going to be doing in the course. I talk about some of the instructional methods, and I do note the textbook for you here, which is the OpenStacks Astronomy textbook, which is freely available online, and I provide a link to that in the first day handout sections. You can actually link to the textbook directly. You can purchase a hard copy if you want, but that is not required. Now, here on this page and the next page we'll also see the course outcomes, things that we will be covering in this course, and you can take a look at those as well. But I want to get into the grading section first, as everyone's always interested in that, and of course this is the grading scale that's provided here, letter grades going from an A for 93% or more down to an F for below 60%. Now, the grading and specifically for the School of Sciences policy is that course grades are not rounded. So what we see here is what the final grade will be, and if you end up with an 89.9, that is a B+. You need to hit 90% in order to get an A- in the class. Now, your grade is calculated in a number of ways and split up between exams, labs, and other assignments shown here. Exams are worth a total of about 30% for the semester exams here and the final exam. Lab work will be worth about 35% for the labs and the semester lab observing project. And then the remainder is other assignments, homework assignments, article reviews, class participation, and professionalism. And I'll go over all of those a little bit here. So the midterm exams will be first, those are worth 20% of the class grade, and there will be four of those and I do drop your lowest grade. So if you do poorly on one of the exams, that will go away at the end of the semester and will not be included in your final calculated grade. We also have the exams will be based on the reading textbook as well as class notes. So it'll be based on a mixture of those things. So some things we may not have covered in as much detail, but are gone over in the textbook, will be covered as well on the exams. So that's the exams and then the questions will be multiple choice and essay, which I mean by short answer, something that can be answered in a few sentences or a diagram. Now there also will be a final exam, which is cumulative, which is split a little bit more into just a set of multiple choice questions and one multiple part essay or short answer. The final exam will be cumulative, so it will cover the entire semester. And we can take a look at the rest of that here. And that is specifying that no, the final exam cannot be dropped. It is only the semester unit exams that can be dropped during the semester. Now we also have class participation, which is broken down into two parts. There are two things. One is one question that you need to ask for each unit of the class, and you do need to email that to me at some point during that unit because of the way the class is being set up this year. It does not have to be the same day. You can email that anytime during the unit, and there will be specific deadlines given and posted in class for you. And you do have to be present that day, meaning that you have to have logged in to something, to have done something in the class if you're taking it remotely, or to have been present in the class in order to receive credit. I will look at those questions, and I will give you a certain amount of points just for sending the question. And then I will have some peer review of the questions that I will provide that you will go through and rank the questions, and that will be worth the remaining three points for the participation for that. The second will be weekly in-class exercises that are worth five points each. Again, you do need to be present in class, and they are only available during the class period. So they'll be available that evening only. They are not available all week, so you can't jump ahead on the participation exercises. You can on the questions, but you cannot on the exercises. You have to do those on those specific evenings. Generally for those in class, as soon as we're done with class, if you have a computer with you, you can just log in and go ahead and do that. If not, you can still leave and get that done as long as you get it done that evening, you'll be fine. But after that, it would be considered late. Now we do have homework assignments. There are four of these during the course of the semester. Each has 20 questions, but you're only assigned ten of them to do. So there is one of these for each of the four units of the class, and just make sure you are looking at what questions I've assigned, whether they're even or odd, and doing only those questions so you're not doing excess work. So you'll want to take a look at those. I do primarily grade them on effort, so a good chunk of the percentage is based on just having tried it. So if you made a decent attempt on each question, even if you got it all wrong, you'll still get a 70-75% on the homework. Then the rest of it will be graded on how accurate you were. I do, as with the lab, I do drop your lowest homework grade. It will be dropped at the end of the semester. Now, I will talk about the solar observation separately, but I do have you observe the sun over the course of the semester, and there will be a formal write-up, which is worth about 15% of your final grade. There's a separate handout for this, and I will talk about that a little bit more later in the section. Article reviews, I do provide some magazine articles that you can select, and you need to select up to three of these. Again, there are two of them. I do drop your lowest grades. You only actually need to do two, so if you do the first two, happy with your grades. You can skip the third one without penalty. These give you a chance to read a recent magazine article on astronomy, and keep up with some of the current findings that may not yet have made it into the textbook. There will be lab work each week, and this will be on Wednesdays. And for those attending remotely, the lab will be available starting on Wednesday evening, so you will be able to access it then, and it does need to be completed at the same time. So I'm trying to keep everything on the same schedule for everyone, whether you're taking the class remotely or in person. I do drop your lowest lab grade, as with others at the end of the semester, so if you miss a lab somewhere along the line, it will not end up having an impact on your final grade. Professionalism is set up by the School of Sciences, and is graded based on things like attendance, behavior, how attentive you are, etc., the various things listed here, and that will comprise 3% of your final grade. Now, in order to go over the course policies, mainly, again, keep an eye on your Stevenson email account and Blackboard on a daily basis. Anything that gets updated or changed, I will send through one of those too, depending on the exact situation. So make sure you're taking a look at those. For me, again, the best way to contact me if not through the discussion boards on Blackboard would be through my email address. So email me there. I really try to reply as quickly as possible and always within 24 hours, meaning if you haven't heard from me within 24 hours, please resend your message or let me know because I must never out of gotten it or it got lost somewhere along the way. If you have missed exams, some of these policies, again, are set by the college, if you miss an exam due to illness or quarantine, make sure you have contacted me prior to the exam, and that way I can work out arrangements for you to be able to make up the exam. As I've said, exams are conducted, can be conducted online for those taking the class remotely, and that means that you can take the class, take the exam, even if you are within quarantine. So you do not have to take it in face-to-face. I am providing the exams online as well. So you can still should be able to take it, regardless of illness or quarantine because they are available online as well. Now the next section, if we look at some of the policies here, we'll see that a couple things that are very important, first of all, please make sure that if you're using electronic devices, you are welcome to have things like computers on, if you're using them for notes, or to follow along with the lecture slides, that's perfectly fine. Other ones, please keep them off in a way and you want them out of the way so that you can really focus on the class. Also specifically, there is, we can do not allow food or drink at all in the lab room. So on Wednesday night for lab, you cannot bring water or any other drinks into the lab room or any food at all. And in this case, this semester, you cannot even have food in the lecture rooms because of the requirement for face coverings. So you can have water, for example, within the lecture room to the best of my knowledge, but you cannot have that within the lab rooms at all. Now, when you're submitting a project, again, the same as with the others, if there are specific illnesses, that can be adjusted. However, don't forget assignments are available well in advance for some things. So for most assignments, this would not necessarily apply unless you're unable to do anything for it. So there are some chances that you have the assignments available early and you can actually work on things like homeworks and article reviews in advance if they are available in advance. Other assignments, I will certainly work with you if these cases come up for things like the participation or the exams or the labs if there are specific situations. Attendance, again, you are expected to attend the class. So constantly missing the class will count against you. However, if you have suspected symptoms and are reporting this to the wellness center, then that would be different and we would work with you on that, of course, and with quarantine requirements. We would certainly work with you on those. So you do need to work on that and if you are out, you are going to need to be able to access the material through the class to be able to keep up with things. So you will still need to keep up with the assignments. For example, if you are quarantined for a couple of weeks, you will still be able to access all of the materials for the class. Participation, again, I have already talked about and that is similar to what we have looked at before. For the submissions here, my specifics for the submissions, again, I do ask that they cannot be handwritten, so things like homeworks, article reviews, and the solar projects must be typed up. The labs, if you are completing them in class, could be handwritten, I am fine with that because if you are filling out worksheets there, I understand. They do need to be submitted through Blackboard. All assignments will be submitted through Blackboard unless you are taking the labs in person. If you are doing the lab in person, you can turn me in the paper there. Otherwise, you do need to submit them on Blackboard and they do need to be in one file and in one of the following formats. Those are the only formats I am able to accept here. Most other word processors will export to those formats if you need to. I do not ask you to scan or photos of the assignments. I want the actual assignment text itself. Assignments need to be submitted through Blackboard and that will facilitate my grading and getting grades back to you quickly. For the assignments, I do allow late assignments and those up to two days late, acquire a 10% penalty, four days late, 25%, and seven days late, 50%. Beyond seven days from the time an assignment was due, I do not accept it for any credit at all. So you can submit them late if you are running late. Of course, there are specific things if you are quarantined or showing COVID symptoms and that would be different and we would work with extending those deadlines a little bit for you to help you be able to keep up with the class. Now, on the next page, we'll take a look at the class schedule. So let's clear all this and we will look at the class schedule here and this shows roughly what we will be doing over the course of the semester. And what we see is, I've broken it down by class days. So each day that we meet on August 31st, this is one of the things we'll be going over on September 1st, we will be starting the first chapter of the textbook and I've gone through, we're going to be working through the textbook, 30 chapters worth, as we'll see from chapter one through chapter 30. Some days we'll be trying to cover two chapters, depending on the actual nature of what we're covering and others we will have just a single chapter. So sometimes it just depends on exactly what we're trying to cover there. And I've given you all of the other assignments. Some of these are pretty well set, so the solar observations, the article reviews will not need any kind of changing. Obviously if for any reason I run behind, homeworks or exams could be delayed, although I don't see the reason for that unless there is some significant change to the schedule or we have cancellations or something happens where we have to readjust the schedule completely. So most likely these will all be set as scheduled and exams will be expected to be completed on the exam night. Other assignments will be due by midnight of that day. Now if we look at the next page, what we find is that these are the specific assignments due dates for some of the major assignments, the homeworks, the article reviews, and the solar project. So I just remind you of the specific dates and then of course the date for the final exam. We are scheduled for Friday, December the 11th at 1.30 in the classroom. So make sure you mark those dates as keeping an eye on when things are going to be coming up due. The university guidelines are really just general information that you should have seen before so I'm not going to go through all of that in great detail again here, but you will see that in all of your classes. Those are general guidelines from the university as to diversity and academic integrity and other things. Again, if you have issues or are showing any symptoms of the virus, you do want to keep track of that and if you have requiring accommodations, please contact the Disability Services Office. I do need that in advance in order to give any accommodations or adjustments for the class. So if you would like that, you do need to contact them. I can't make the accommodations myself. They need to be made through the university and through that. And again, make sure if you have any symptoms, you do need to report those to the Wellness Center immediately so that they can keep track of everything. So that is also definitely don't come to class and that will be, and then do report that to the Wellness Center so it's all documented for you. Some of the requirements, again, here are going through some of the new health and hygiene protocols you can read through those. We will have specific seating so they can keep track of anything if there are any issues for the class. Now as we go on and finish this up, get towards the end here. Our next page will show us some of the links for Disability Services. Again, make sure you take care of that on there. If there are, if you have any accommodations that are needed, they will take care of that. Academic link, library, other online resources and the Wellness Center are all linked to there. And then finally we have the learning goals and outcomes that you can have and those are listed down below on this page and on the next one. Then the last page will be the course contract. This is actually your first participation exercise. So you want to read through the syllabus. I've gone through it a little bit. Read through it in detail. Ask me any questions. And then when you're done, print and sign this and submit it to me on Blackboard before the end of the day on September 1st. So normally it is due the day I assign it. For the course contract I give you a little bit of extra time so that you can have time to go through the syllabus and not feel that you're rushed to sign and agree to the syllabus without having fully read it. If you're happy with it at the beginning you can just get it signed and submit it on the first day of class. But you have until September 1st to be able to go ahead and submit that. So that concludes our little walkthrough of the syllabus here for our class this semester. If you have any questions as always feel free to contact me. So until next time, have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.