 Greetings and welcome to the introduction to astronomy and physical science. The purpose of this video is to go through the syllabus for the class and give you a rough idea of what you'll be doing, so you can read through the syllabus yourself, but many students have found it helpful to have me walk them through it as I would in the first day of a traditional class. So information you'll find in the syllabus would be the specific class you are taken up here at the top. You'll find my name and my office where you can visit me if you wish to come by and it also has my email. Office hours would be here, of course those will be specific to the semester in which you are taking this. I also note that I'll be available by email and that I'll also set up zoom office hours if you wish to visit as well. Office phone, again I give you that although for again email is much faster for contact if I'm not actually on the campus I will not get any message there is there until I am back on campus, so you definitely much better to email me. Delayed opening, that does not apply for online classes so we don't need to worry about that. You'll see the information on your textbook here. I pick it out for one specific class but you'll look for your specific information there and information on the labs as to what you what you need for those. Now as we go down I want to go through the basics of the course so the course description that we see here tells you what the course will cover so that's the description from the catalog and then there are the learning outcomes what you're expected to have learned by the end of the semester. For office hours I've already mentioned those again please I do recommend that you email me and let me know that you're coming even for if you're going to survive schedule zoom office hours let me know because things do happen and I get called away so feel free to email me if I know somebody is coming I will make every effort to be there and we'll be happy to help you with any questions you may have. Email I do ask that you email me use my hack email address that I provided up above and the college policy is that the responses to be within 48 business hours so that does not count weekends or holidays personally I generally reply within 24 hours often much faster than that so if you haven't heard from me within 24 hours of the time you sent the message please resend it's quite possible that the message got missed or filed away and or there was some issue perhaps you mistyped my email address and it didn't actually get to me so if you don't hear from me within 24 hours please resend your message so I can get back to you what we're using for the textbook of course will vary from class to class so we can look at that here again if we have a textbook that has older editions you're welcome to use that although there may be some differences a lot of the lab software come some of it cannot be installed on a Chromebook so I mentioned that up above you do need a Mac or a PC laptop or desktop will work fine for it to be able to complete the lab exercises for the class some can be done on a Chromebook but not all of them so you'll want to watch how that how that has worked so let's take a look at some of the assignments that will be doing over the course of the semester first of all there are unit quizzes which are multiple choice quizzes to review the material within each of the units of the class so I'll divide the class into about four units each of those will be worth 20 points and I do drop your lowest one in this case you can take each of these up to three times and your highest grade will be the one that is recorded in the gradebook for you so you get three chances to work on each unit quiz questions will be different each time but I will drop your lowest I will drop your so I'll take only your highest of the three grades if you choose to take it three times the midterm exam will cover the first few lessons of the class the first half of the class and we broken into two parts there will be multiple choice questions and the other will be essay or short answer questions this is not a timed section so you're welcome to take as much time as you need on it but you do need to have it submitted by the deadline that is given and that is worth 100 points towards the class you do only get one attempt on this and on the final now the final exam will be comprehensive and is worth 150 points towards the class so you'll want to review that there will be again it'll be a multiple choice it'd be broken into two parts multiple choice and a short answer or essay questions and you will get only one attempt on that as well for the big part of the class you will find is the labs so laboratory activities there are nine of them scattered throughout the semester so there won't be one each week there are nine and there were 30 points each for a total of 240 points after your lowest grade has been dropped so if you do poorly on one lab you have the chance to make that up by doing of course all of the labs similarly with the discussions discussions are worth 240 points there will be nine of those and your lowest grade will be dropped so I'll take off your lowest grades in terms of discussions what you what you need to do is put your post in by Saturday at 6 a.m. so that's the one deadline that is different for this class every this everything else is due by Monday at 6 a.m. for the discussions you have to have your post in by Saturday so that other students have a chance to respond so you'll get that additional 48 hours to be able to post your responses and I look at the three things three parts of the grading include your original post your three responses and a reading of a minimum of 75% of the posts that have been made that's all posts and responses and I always give you a little bit of time after that so I don't grade the discussions on Monday morning I'll never grade them until at least Tuesday morning I do give some word limits 250 for the initial post is the minimum and 75 for the response and anything lower than that will not get full credit and I also don't count certain things so if you're putting your name or a high or good post in a response for example I don't count those into your word count if you're including any of my questions that I might have asked in your initial post those don't count towards your word count I'm looking for the actual content that you have made now the other part of the lab so labs were worth 240 points for the labs but there's one other lab that is semester long which is the solar project and I go over that in more detail in a separate video but that is towards your lab grade making labs worth about 40% of this course this is a semester project so you do need to get started on it early and we'll and do see the other material that I've given for you to be able to look at this and go over that I ask you to do an article review which is reviewing a science article and looking at that I give you two opportunities to do this but I take only your highest grade so if you do the first one and do well on it you can skip the second one and your first grade will be the one recorded so it just gives you a chance to look at a relatively recent review of an article that is that is given in for the material covered in this course and that is something that you can you will want to look at again I give more detail on this in a separate video in terms of a few other things I have a couple of other regular extra credit opportunities which include the quizzes and a homework assignments so quizzes are given by each unit so there will be 13 points extra credit 13 quizzes worth one point each you can take them as many times as you like and your first attempt is what is recorded so if you get 5 right on the first attempt you get half a point of extra credit for having taken it you can then take it as many times as you like to review the material and study for the exams homework homework is again also extra credit there will be a set of questions given and that you can do that will ask you to do they could involve a number of different things you can take a look at those and there are five of them each are worth up to five points of extra credit and these will be similar to things that will be in the essay slash short answer portion of the exam so it's a good review for the exams and can add a few percent to your final grade when when completed so that breaks up the assignments in terms of submitting assignments I do ask that every assignment be submitted through D2L so you have to submit everything through there I do not grade emailed assignments so if you email me something that can be done in an emergency if you need to verify that something was done on time but in order to grade it and give you credit I have to have it submitted through D2L assignments are always due by Monday before 6 a.m. so even at at 6 a.m. they will be marked as late so even one second after D2L will mark them as late and there is a penalty for the late submission and we show that down here below for the late assignments that those will do will will occur so if you wait to the last minute you do run the risk of a power outage or something else affecting your grade so I do recommend getting started on them early you can always submit an assignment and then if you need to update it you can update it and submit in second submission and I will grade your most recent one in terms of late assignments I do accept them for some types of assignments and that would be things like the labs but they will be deducted as follows here anything up to the first 48 hours late would be 10% after that the next two days after that would be 25% and up until one week late it would be a 50% deducted and after seven days late no credit is given and you can in fact no longer submit the assignments things like discussions quizzes and exams may not be made up they are done at the end of that assignment and they may not be made up for partial credit so you do need to do those ones on the schedule it is only things like labs or anything else that is submitted to a Dropbox that can be submitted late also no assignments can be accepted for credit after the end of the semester which means the time when the final exam for the class ends which is the last day scheduled for the semester by the college after that I am no longer able to accept any assignments even if they fall within the late assignment time period grading policy again I try to give you very prompt feedback I try to have everything returned within one week of when they are when they were due not within one week of when they are submitted so if you submitted it early you may not get it back for longer than a week but as of the due date I try to have everything back within one week for you the breakdown of the class is given here in terms of the unit quizzes and exams credit there is the lab work here and the solar project which is your lab portion of the assignments and the discussion boards and the article reviews and I break that down on a straight 90 80 70 60 scale and beyond anything else I do not round grades at all so if you end up with 89.99 that is a B grade you need to hit 90 points in order to have earned an A the way I do this is because I give you some extra credit as I've talked about above and I drop a number of assignments so really I've already rounded your grade up several percent that from where it would have been assuming you do your extra do the extra credit and that you take advantage of the dropped assignments beyond that I do not adjust the grades further attendance policy so how does attendance work in an online class well what I do is define the attendance policy such that attending the class is not simply logging into the class you actually have to do something you actually have to physically look at assignments so participation in discussion boards and the completion of assignments if you're just logging into the course that is not sufficient and I will process drops for students who are no longer attending the course so if you don't submit anything for about two weeks you would then be dropped because you would have missed at least 15 percent of the assignments at that point you've missed 15 percent of the classwork and that according to the college is the point at which I can the instructor can drop you from the class please I do try to reach out into you in advance and if there are issues that come up if you contact me in advance I can do what we can do a little more we can work out what needs to be done and help you with that that I know that there are concerns even if you're missing some assignments but unless an absence is excused with documentation then you're there are no chances to make up that those any assignments that were missed so again reach out to me in advance and I can usually work with you if you contact me afterwards there's much less that I can do academic dishonesty the college policy is listed below as well and again what I will look at is you know I will give you warnings if there are cases I detect cases of academic dishonesty my policy is stated as follows in line with the college policy that the first time it's a zero on the entire assignment that you're submitting as well as a warning will go to the student's class account email accounts the second one is a zero for the assignment and a letter grade reduction in the final class grade and a third instance would be an automatic f-grade for the class and removal from the class with the failing grade and please note that if you have you are not eligible for a w-grade in the class if you have been found guilty of academic dishonesty so you would be dropped from the class and it would be with an f-grade you cannot withdraw yourself with a w after that point once that has been submitted to the college so that's one thing to be careful make sure you're doing your own work and of course citing anything that you're using from outside sources my w-grade policy in line with hacks policy would be that you can withdraw yourself from the class unless there is a situation of academic dishonesty within the first 70 percent of the course meeting so at that point you can withdraw yourself and you would get a w-grade if i had dropped you for not participating i always put in an f-grade so it's up to you if you want a w-grade you need to go into my hack and withdraw from the class and you can view the deadlines there through the link provided in the syllabus now i'll also give a course schedule for each class the one here is of course specific to the class that i'm looking at but you'll find the week that's the day the week starts this is the lesson the material that will be covering what reading what chapters you'll be reading any exams that are involved assignments that are due that week and any extra credit assignments that are there the assignments are the week starting interdue with the end of that week so here we have january 18th the material would then be due by 6 a.m on january 25th and you can go ahead and get everything you'll get everything submitted by that point this is just a breakdown again what's exactly here will differ from class to class but the content the general procedures will still remain the same so you'll want to look through that you may want to print that out as a reminder of what is due for each week and then just to go through a little other there's the refund schedule which i've already given you delayed opening again does not apply to online classes the standard response time is that we're to respond within 48 hours uh monday through friday so not counting holidays not counting weekends during the summer fridays are considered holidays so i typically will respond within less than a day less than 24 hours but that is the formal college policy we've already talked a little bit about the attendance policy that just formalizes what the college considers an excused and an unexcused absences so in order for an absence to be to be excused in this class there has to be some kind of documentation of an extenuating circumstance that would be excuse you and allow you to make up material if there are excessive absences we've already talked about that and i guess in addition exceeding 15 percent of the total class hours or total number of assignments in an online class will drop you as you're no longer able to attain the learning outcomes for the class and would then be dropped from the class and again if i do that it is with a failing grade uh academic dishonesty this is the formal college policy my specifics were given up above which are in line with the college policy and then finally students who may need accommodations to contact student access services uh they were the only ones who can give specific accommodations if you have something like extended time for tests they have to give me that policy i cannot just extend them for you you have to go through them they will tell me what then what accommodations are allowed and i will certainly update your course to allow for any accommodations that they give and the contacts that you need are given here so if you're on one of the specific campuses you can contact that person and for those in virtual the contact is right here for harrisburg campus and virtual learning so that concludes this walkthrough of the syllabus for my astronomy and physical science classes there may be some slight differences depending on the exact course you're taking but it gives you a rough idea of what we will be doing for the course so uh hopefully that has helped you get started in the class do feel free as always to email me if there are any questions so until next time have a great day everyone and i will see you in class