 Greetings and welcome to the Introduction to Astronomy. The purpose of this video is to give you an idea of what the class will be like by looking at a sample syllabus for the class. So while the course information up here may be different than what you have, and you'll want to consider that some of the specific information here as the textbook will occasionally change and office hours may change from semester to semester, but it's an idea to give you a little bit of information about what the class is going to be like, so what of what I would do on the first day of class in a traditional class. Now we start off with the course description, which you likely have seen when you registered for the class, which tells about what we're going to be going over. And then we can also, if we go down a little bit here, we can see that there are the learning outcomes, what you are expected to learn by the end of the semester. Now for the details, I give you my office hours information at the top. I can do my offices on the York campus and I can also schedule Zoom office hours each week as well. I will either give you those or schedule them each week. I'm also always available by email, so I check email and discussion boards regularly and in fact I get an immediate notification of them. That doesn't mean I can reply to you immediately, but I generally am able to reply within a few hours each time. And if you haven't heard from me within 24 hours, please resend and double check your email address to make sure that it is getting to me directly. The textbook will be listed on the syllabus and those are I use open educational resources, meaning that you have the book starting from the first day of class. It is freely linked to in there. There is no additional charge to it. You can download Kindle versions or PDF versions for free. There are also hard cover versions that you can purchase. Now students will often ask me about math in the class. Really very little in the math of the class will go beyond about the eighth grade level. You may see a few things that look a little bit higher, but typically we are doing adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It just may be a little bit different the way things are set up. So it's often not the math, but it is the way things are set up. We do need to be able to use scientific notation and I do provide some material for you to go over that. If you wish to review any of the math, go to the math help videos that I link to in the very first module of the class. Now I will warn you that you do see trigonometric functions when we look at our solar project. However, you do not need to know anything about trig functions to use them. Only what buttons you have to push on your calculator and I will go over that. Now let's look at the assignments that we will have. And assignments are broken up into a number of different types. There are unit quizzes, which cover, there's four of those, so it's about every three lessons worth and the fourth lesson will include a unit quiz, which is a set of multiple choice questions for you to answer based on those. Please note that you can take these three times, although the questions will change, and I'll record your highest grade of those three in the grade book. So if you do well on the first one, you can skip the other two tries. If you do poorly, you can try to improve, but note that the attempt will not hurt you. So if you do worse on the second or third try, it'll still be your highest of those three that is the one recorded in the grade book. The midterm exam is worth 50 points, and that will cover the first six lessons. And that is two parts, there is a multiple choice and an essay portion. So you will look at those two parts separately, each of them is timed. So you will have a time limit on each case. And then we'll have a final exam that is 75 points, which will be very similar in structure, but will cover material from the entire course, although it will be weighted toward the material since the midterm exam. Now this is a lab class, so actually a lot of the points apply to labs. You'll see that there are not that many points allocated towards quizzes and exams, as compared to the laboratory activities. There will be nine labs over the course of the semester, so you will not see one each week, but you'll see most weeks you will have a lab, and a few weeks you'll get a break from a lab. Those are worth 240 points, 24% of the class. So just the labs themselves are nearly a quarter of your grade. So you will want to make sure you're working on those. Ask questions about them, try to look at them earlier. They're not ones that can necessarily be easily finished just in a short amount of time. Typically we have about 14 hours worth of lab time for the semester. So nine labs will take you on the average of maybe an hour and a half, between an hour and a half to two hours each. But again, if you're stuck on something, ask a question so you don't spend hours on something that we can get fixed within just a few minutes. Discussions are also worth 24% of your grades. You see there that labs and discussions themselves are nearly half of your grade, so make sure you're looking at those. You will have nine discussions, just like the labs, although they may not always be in the same weeks. I give you three things, three options, three questions, and you require your post. You pick one, whichever one sounds most interesting to you this that week, and you post that by the deadline, which is going to be Saturday at 6 a.m. This will be different than all other deadlines in the course, which are Monday at 6 a.m. and this is because I do require responses. So if everybody has their initial posts in by 6 o'clock, then you're not having to wait until someone who wants to wait until the end of the week to finish their posting so that you can do responses. So your initial post is due by Saturday. If you missed that deadline, please go ahead and continue the discussion. There is a late penalty for it, but you are still going to be far better off getting some points than getting no points. So you get the extra 48 hours until Monday morning at 6 a.m. to post three responses. And then I ask you to read a minimum of 75% of the total postings that were made, posts and responses. And I give you at least another day after that to be able to read any late postings. I don't want you having to stay up until 6 a.m. on Monday because some people are making their posts at 4 and 5 in the morning. You can look over them Monday at your convenience. I will never grade them until at least Tuesday. Morning. I do give you the limits here. There is a 250-word minimum for an initial post, a 75 words for a response, things like students' names or great posts, good work on your posts. Those things do not count toward your word count. I'm looking for the content. Those things are great. Don't get me wrong. You're welcome to put them in there, but they don't count towards the minimum word requirement. Now, the solar project at 160 points is 16% of your grade. So that's actually another part of the lab, so that pushes your labs up to 40% of your grade for the course. There will be another video that discusses this in detail, so I'm not going to go over that much here, but it is a semester-long project and you do need to get started on it early on. The article reviews are worth 10% of your grade. And those are, there's going to be three chances to do the review and I will drop your lowest one. So if you do all three, your lowest grade will be dropped. If you do the first two and you're happy with your grades, you can skip the third one and it will be a zero and will then be your lowest grade and dropped. And I'll go over again more details with this in a separate video. I have a separate video that will look just at the article review assignment. Now let's go ahead and look at the last little bit here and we'll see observations of the sky. I want you to get out and look at the sky. This is specific for astronomy classes and there are three points during the semester where I ask you to submit an observation. So what you need to do is go look for the moon and the constellations at several different points during the semester. I'll give you a warning as to when they're due. I do need a summary of what you were able to find. Just a short written paragraph. It doesn't have to be in great detail. And I do require photos of what you were able to see. Now, the photos can be difficult sometimes, but if you make sure you do not have any extended exposures open on your camera, you don't have the flash on, you can actually get photographs. I've been able to get photographs. Easily of the moon and of the some of the brighter stars, even from relatively even from illuminated parking lots. You try to avoid getting the actual lights in your image. You can usually get at least something there. Show me what you were able to see. So I'm not looking for detailed professional images. I'm just looking for what you were able to get. And again, I will have a more detailed video for this. This is a very detailed video. And again, I will have a more detailed video for this assignment as well as the article reviews and the solar observations separate separate from this. Now that breaks down our class. Let's look at the extra couple of extra credit opportunities that come up. So that's the main portion. I do do quizzes. There's one quiz in each lesson except for one lesson. There'll be 13 of these. These are review quizzes on the material from the lesson. There are multiple choice questions. They're based on same test banks that will be used for the midterm and the final and the review in the unit quizzes. So these are a chance to get a little extra credit. Here's 10 multiple choice questions. Your first attempt is extra credit. So if you get 8 out of 10 the first time you get 8 tenths of a point. Doesn't sound like a lot but over 13 quizzes that can add up over the course of the semester. So I recommend you do them even if you only get a couple questions right. It still may help you at the end. Homework. There are five homework which are written response questions. They're worth up to five points of extra credit each. So again 25 points of extra credit might not sound like a whole lot but that ends up being two and a half percent of your final grade. So if you ended up with an 89 percent in the class say 890 points some of those extra credit points for the homework if you had done that you might have pushed you up into the A range. So it could have pushed you from a B into an A. So it's certainly worth looking at them. Again these are graded on completion. So make a reasonable attempt. Give it a try and you will get most of the credit for these. And again there are chance to review some of the material and in fact the questions are similar to some of the types of questions to what I would use on the midterm and final for the written essay portion. Now to submit assignments in the class I do require that everything go through the learning management system do not email me assignments. However and they also do need to be submitted in either word or pdf format for submission. So if you submitted in something else then you're going to receive a reduction in credit and that's just because other formats unfortunately don't open within the LMS so you don't have to do that. So I would recommend that you submit assignments in the class that are grading and require extra work. So if you use pages on a Mac for example that's great but exported to word or pdf before submitting so that I can open and grade things more efficiently for you. My goal is to get things back to you quickly. Now that said if there's an emergency and something just won't work with D2L or won't work with D2L. So if you email it to me at 558 in the morning before it was due I will be able to count it as on time even if you can't get it submitted to D2L until later that day because of an issue. You still need to submit it through D2L before the last deadline for that assignment in order to receive any credit for it however. So you can't just email it to me but that is a good backup if you're unable to for some time submit the assignment. Now for late assignments I do have the 6 a.m. is automatically starts late so it has to be in by 5.59 and 59 seconds so allow for that when you're trying to upload things. I do give you a minimal deduction for just the first hour it's a 5% deduction so it's only depending on the assignment that's a very small amount just so you lose a little bit but if you're running later it's only a minor deduction there and then it's up to 10% for the first two days after the first 48 hours the next two days after that it jumps to 25% between 4 and 7 days it's 50% and there is no credit for things that are more than 7 days late. Now that only applies to it applies to all assignments other than the discussions which there is no late assignment at all and it also does not apply to the final exam or any other assignments that are due the last week so if you're taking a full semester course that would be just the final exam but in some of the compressed courses the 12 week or the 7 week or the summer classes which are a little shorter there may be extra assignments with the final exam some of the late exams are not going to be more credit either. The only excused absences that I allow are if you have an accommodation provided by student access services in advance or if you have a medical note from your doctor. Again I try to give you a lot of leeway here with dropping some assignments such as a lab is dropped a discussion is dropped so if you have to I take so other internet work issues do not count for giving you an extension on an assignment you can always submit anything other than a discussion and the last week of class you can submit anything with these specific deductions and even that first two days deduction with only 10% comes out to only three points on say a lab so it's not a whole lot there and still gives you those two extra assignments these require no notification no nothing if you just submit the assignment a day or too late I will then grade it and give you credit for it with the appropriate deduction allowed in there but this counts for any assignments other than discussions discussions are locked at 6am on the day they're due and that is the end of it so that would be late assignments so if you have a particular on grading I try very hard to have everything back to you quickly and I my goal is everything within one week and in order to encourage me to do that if I do not have things graded one week after the due date so if something was due September 5th and I don't have it back by that time by that same time on September 12th there's a lot of people who would get an extra three points just because I graded it late that rarely happens I try very hard to make sure that that never does but I will give you that bonus if I am ever late on grading for any regular graded assignment now I've broken down all of the grading again here this just summarizes what we looked at but I do ask you to note another hundred and sixty on the observations so lab type work and observations ends up being almost 45% of your grade as compared if you look at the quizzes in the exams I've cut those down quite a bit those are only about 21 to 22% of your grade so there is the lab work is far more important than things like the mid terms and the final exams grading is a straight 90, 80, 70, 60 scale so you need 900 points to have earned an A 800 for a B, 700 for a C, 600 for a D anything less than that and yes that does mean a tenth of a point less than that receives the lower grade 899.99 is a B and I do not do any rounding for the classes and while that may seem harsh don't forget I've given you a decent amount of extra credit opportunities in the class which have boosted your grade I drop some assignments that also boosts your grade so really your grades have already been rounded up several percent and what may look like an 89.9 might really have been an 84 or an 85 so the grading will not be rounded beyond that I won't give any last second extra credit to get you that extra point or two and I do again only thing that is assigned here is a letter grade that is the only thing recorded by the college I don't give out numerical grades if you need them for anything you're welcome to keep keep keep track of them yourself but if you need them for another school you can the only thing that is recorded in the class and in the final grade that is submitted to the college are the letter grade is the letter grade that you received the numerical grades are only a part of that and do not apply other outside of the determining your letter grade now attendance how do we work attendance in a virtual class well we're not going to see each other all the time so we are going to have participation are you participating in discussion boards are you completing graded assignments simply logging into the course is not considered attending the course I do review attendance and I do drop students who have missed if you're consistently missing assignments you will be removed from the course and the college allows that once 15% of the assignments have been missed so if you missed a few graded assignments you can be dropped from the course now normally that's just when somebody disappears and never contacts and never submits assignments at all and doesn't show up usually about two or three weeks is sufficient to have reached that amount so I can try to work with you and at least let you know what you need to get done and what you may not what you may be able to skip if there are specific issues but you need to talk to me in advance not after you've missed two or three weeks I'm going to give you some reminders here and I'm not going to go through these in great detail but things like plagiarism those are not necessarily copying but just changing a little bit is automatically can give you an automatic zero on the assignment what I do is if I find evidence of plagiarism I give you a zero on the assignment along with a warning and then the second time is a automatic referral to the college and a record of that as well as a letter grade drop in the course and a third if the third instance then that would be an automatic F and removal from the class so I just want to give you a reminder of that W grades if you wish to withdraw you have to withdraw if I withdraw you I put an F in there so if you want to W grade you need to go in and withdraw don't wait until the last withdrawal deadline because if you miss several weeks of class then I may drop you before that and you'll already be removed with an F if you know you're going to be withdrawing reach out to me I will encourage you and give you a guidance as to how to get removed from the class so that you can process that W grade instead of an F but if a student just disappears I automatically assign that an F grade now you will see a class schedule for each class and it's subject to change although usually it stays pretty good unless we have a major emergency and it will tell you what week and that's the starting week of the class what the lesson we're covering is any chapters to read any exams that are involved there any other assignments that are due and any extra credit assignments so it gives you a breakdown as to what you're going to be looking at in each in each class I'm going to give you some more information here again most of this is just for review and you should see in all of them this is the refund schedule if you have any questions use the link there to find out when the add and drop deadlines are and also reach out to me I'll be more than happy to help delayed opening really does not apply to online classes so if we have any weather if there are specific issues we can look at that individually but normally we do not do anything with delayed openings or college closures online classes continue as normal I also don't do any holidays so we keep going right through holidays you can of course take any day you need off there aren't since there aren't any specific requirements so if you want to not work on one specific day you don't have to but I don't a lot make allowances for any of the holidays whether the college recognizes them or not response time again the requirement of the university is 48 hours Monday through Friday I will have everything graded in one week and I will respond to any emails or postings within 24 hours so if you don't hear from me within 24 hours there's some something's gone wrong maybe I lost your email maybe your email didn't come through properly or you type my email address wrong please feel free to send it again ask me if I got your message because it's quite possible if you haven't heard from me in 24 hours that I did not get it and again most times you'll hear from me even quicker than that we have college attendance policy here you can review what we mean by an excused or an unexcused or excessive absences college academic dishonesty policy and then finally the student access services for accommodations if you are eligible for accommodations these are the people to contact depending on your campus so you can reach out to any of these whoever is there this is the one for virtual over here specifically but if you're based on a campus and already working through somebody you don't have to change that your information is already there just make sure that I get that you request that the accommodation letter be sent to me as early as possible because I can't give you the accommodations until I receive that letter and I can't go back to previous assignments until that that we're done before that is received so make sure you have it all set up first so we can make sure that you have any accommodations to which you are entitled so that concludes this lecture on the syllabus and general course operations we'll be back again next time to continue helping to introduce the class so until then have a great day everyone and I will see you in class