Instructor: Dr. Pamela J. W. Gore, Professor of
Geology
E-mail address: pgore@gpc.edu
World Wide Web
Address: http://gpc.edu/~pgore/gore.htm
Office
phone: (678) 891-3754
Clarkston Campus Science Department
Secretary (for emergencies):(678) 891-3766
FAX: (678) 891-3747 (in secretary's office).
Please do not fax homework. Include instructor's name and YOUR NAME on
ALL faxed pages.
Office room number: CC-2161 (Clarkston Campus)
Mailing Address:
Catalog description:
Physical Geology is the study of the Earth and the processes which shape it. The course offers an overview of plate tectonics, volcanism, earthquakes, mountain building, weathering, erosion, soil, origin of minerals and rocks, and water and energy resources. A fieldtrip is optional.
Prerequisite: Exit or exemption from all Learning Support and ESL requirements.
Required textbook and items for lecture:
Tarbuck, E.J. and Lutgens, F.K., 2005, The Earth - An Introduction to Physical Geology, 8th Edition, Prentice Hall, with CD-ROM. ISBN 0-13-147748-x or 0-13-114865-6.
Recommended book:
"Student Lecture Notebook" for The
Earth, 8th edition. ISBN = 0-13-144729-7.
Submitting Assignments
Assignments may be submitted by any of the following:
Remember to KEEP A COPY OF EVERYTHING YOU TURN IN!!!!!
Assignments are due within ONE WEEK of the day assigned, unless otherwise specified on the WebCT Vista weekly schedule. Assignments are due on or before the due date.
Assignments will be returned to students by mail once or twice during the semester, or you may pick them up in the instructor's office. Please send the instructor two self-addressed stamped (about $1.50 postage) envelopes (9"x12") in order to have your labs returned by mail.
Online Information and Release Form
All students must fill out the online information and release form. http://gpc.edu/~pgore/online/form.php
By submitting the online information and release form, you are also stating that you have received a syllabus or have received the online address of the syllabus. You also agree that you understand that you are responsible for ALL of the information in this syllabus. You agree to abide by the highest standard of academic honesty. You also agree that any communications in the course may be read by an outside party, such as if the course is submitted to the WebCT Exemplary Course Project.
Communicating with the Instructor:
Regular communication is a very important part of this course. Please feel free to ask questions at any time, either by e-mail, on the bulletin board, by phone during office hours, or in person during office hours (call first to be sure I am not in a meeting or on another campus).
E-mail response time:
I check e-mail frequently during office hours. I will generally reply to your e-mail within 24 hours unless I am out of town (which I will announce through Discussion area or e-mail). I may or may not check e-mail on weekends, depending on my schedule, so do not expect a prompt reply if you post Friday afternoon or Friday night. I may not see your message until Monday afternoon when I get out of class.
If I do not respond promptly, your email may not have been received, so please try again.
Class schedule:
You should plan on at least 10 hours per week dedicated to this
course.
This must include:
Please be sure you have set aside adequate time!!!
Attendance Policy:
Posting to the Discussion area or e-mail, and logging in to access the password-protected WebCT course are considered to be equivalent to class attendance. Students should log in to the course at least twice per week.
Students who never attend a class and never "log-in" for a distance learning class by the end of the first two weeks of the term will be reported for non-attendance. Students who do not drop a class during the schedule adjustment period and are reported for non-attendance will be automatically dropped from that course.
Students who stop logging in and posting to the class and stop participating will receive an F for the class if they do not officially Withdraw.
If you must be away for a certain period of time, please let the instructor know in advance.
Withdrawal Policy
The midpoint of the semester is Tuesday March 13, 2007.
A student who officially withdraws by the midpoint of the semester will receive a grade of "W". A student who withdraws after the midpoint of the semester will receive a "WF" unless approval as a hardship withdrawal is received from the Dean.
Students who never attend a class and never "log-in" for a distance learning class by the end of the first two weeks of the term will be reported for non-attendance. Students who do not drop a class during the schedule adjustment period and are reported for non-attendance will be automatically dropped from that course.
If you choose to stop logging in to WebCT, or to stop reading and responding to e-mails from the instructor, you must complete the withdrawal process through the Registrar's Office by the specified dates, or you will receive an "F" for the course.
Exams and Quizzes:
Quizzes are available in WebCT Vista. You get three attempts at each online quiz to help you master the material. Quizzes must be taken during specified dates. All online quizzes are closed book, closed note quizzes. Students are not to give or receive help on the quizzes.
There will be two proctored exams, a Midterm and a Final. Exams are given on Clarkston Campus in the Geology Lab (CC-1150). It may also be possible to take lecture exams in a Testing Center. The proctored Midterm exam is to be taken on Clarkston Campus during the week of Feb 26, 2007 or by appointment at a testing center. You must sign up in the class Discussion area in WebCT Vista for a time to take your exam.
The proctored Final Exam is to be taken by appointment during Finals week (as specified in the Schedule of Classes). You must sign up in the class Discussion area in WebCT for a time to take your exam.
THE FINAL EXAM IS CUMULATIVE AND COMPREHENSIVE
A note about the final: If you score less than 70% on the final exam, you will not receive an A for a final course grade, and similarly, if you score less than 60% on the final exam, you will not will not receive a B for a final grade, regardless of your overall average plus any extra credit.
If you fail one or both proctored exams, but do well on the unproctored quizzes, you will be asked to retake the quizzes in a proctored setting before your grades are turned in. This may necessitate a return to campus after final exams. If the student is unable to take the quizzes in a proctored setting before final grades are due, the quiz grades may be dropped from the calculation of the final grade.
Testing centers are available on some campuses. Please check with the campus of your choice to determine whether there is a testing center available.
If you want to use a Testing Center, you will need to arrange this with your instructor several weeks before the date of the exam. Your instructor will need to know when and where you wish to take the exam, if you are not coming to Clarkston on the date listed above, so that the exam will be ready for you. (LAB exams must be taken at Clarkston, if you are in the online lab.)
If you are out-of-the area, you may be able to arrange for an approved outside proctor at your own expense, if you need to take an exam elsewhere.
Basis of Grading:
33% Proctored Final Exam
33% Homework assignments, reports, projects, online quizzes, etc.
Your grades will be posted in password-protected WebCT Vista.
The lecture grade is separate from the lab grade, if the student is enrolled in a lab.
Grading scale:
90-100% A
80-90% B
70-80% C
60-70% D
below 60% F
Grades will no longer be mailed to students' home addresses at the end of the semester. Reports of student grades are available via Web (http://www.gpc.edu/Banner_Web/).
EXTRA CREDIT:
There will be opportunities for extra credit projects or papers during the semester. Up to five earned extra credit points can be applied to your final class average. Extra credit exercises must be done independently from other students. All extra credit must be typed using a word processing program.
Possible extra credit projects (one point each):
Policy on Academic Honesty
Academic dishonesty (cheating and plagiarism) will not be tolerated. Students should read the sections on cheating and plagiarism in the Georgia Perimeter College Student Handbook and Georgia Perimeter College Catalog.
Cheating includes (among other things), use of unauthorized papers (or a cell phone or pager) during a quiz or exam (no matter what the content), looking at any notes or books or other materials during an unproctored online quiz, talking with someone about the quiz material during an unproctored online quiz, telling a student who has not taken the quiz or exam about the quiz or exam after you have taken it, copying from another student's paper during a test, allowing another student to copy from your paper during a test, unauthorized access to old exams or to an exam given to the class if you are taking it late for some reason, copying another student's homework assignments, using or turning in a photocopy of another student's assigned work, paying someone to write a paper or do an assignment for you, buying or downloading a term paper, or leaving the room during a test without permission or before turning in your paper. Cheating also includes giving a false excuse to the instructor in order to get the instructor to give extended time, an incomplete, or other consideration relating to a grade.
With online testing, it is particularly important to pay strict attention to academic honesty. Do not access a test online before you are ready to take it. Do not look at a printout of the test before you take it. Do not look at your books or notes or other papers while taking an online test. Do not have another person take the test for you. Do not have another person tell you answers to the test.
Plagiarism includes copying any phrases, sentence, or sentences verbatim from the reference source without using quotation marks and without providing a complete reference (author, date, source of material, volume, pages, etc.), or printing out an article directly from a computer database (such as Encarta or off the World Wide Web) and turning it in as your own work. Students must read, synthesize, and write their own original sentences; learn to paraphrase. Even when paraphrasing, a complete reference must be provided to the paraphrased sentences. NEVER steal words directly from any source and present them as your own.
Students are responsible for doing their own work, even if they "work together". If two papers are turned in that show great similarity such that the instructor interprets it as evidence of cheating or plagiarism, both will be penalized.
A report will be filed with the Campus Dean of Student Affairs for any alleged cheating or plagiarism incident. (See procedure in College Catalog.) The case will be heard by the College Court. Penalties may include suspension or expulsion.
The faculty member is free to assign the grade he or she thinks is appropriate for the assignment or quiz, or exam, or for the semester (regardless of any outcome from College Court).
Any student found by the instructor to have represented someone else's work as his/her own, will receive a zero for that quiz, exam, or assignment for the first offense. The second offense will result in the assignment of a grade of "F" for the course. (If several papers are turned in together or at the same time, and each contains evidence of cheating or plagiarism, they will be considered as separate offenses, and will result in immediate assignment of a grade of "F" for the course.) This policy applies to cheating or plagiarism on extra credit work as well.
Cheating on an exam will jeopardize your grade; if you receive a zero on an exam it will be extremely difficult to receive a passing grade for the course.
WebCT Vista:
Visit http://gpc.edu/webct/ for information on WebCT Vista.
Browser Check:
You must check your web browser with the GPC Interactive Browser Analyzer http://gpc.edu/webct/analyzer/ to determine whether your computer and web browser will function properly with WebCT Vista, the course management software.Online WebCT Vista Orientation:
You must also work through the required Online Orientation/WebCT Vista Tutorial. The link to the Orientation may be found at http://gpc.edu/webct/.
Obtaining your WebCT Vista password:On or around the first day of classes, go to http://gpc.edu/webct/ and follow the directions on the screen. You will need to enter your student number (no hyphens) and birthdate in the specified format. Click submit. Please write down your user name and password for your WebCT course(s). You may access this information three times, and after that you will have to call the Educational Technologies helpdesk for assistance at (678) 891-3460.
WebCT Vista IDs will not be available before the first day of classes.
Accessing your course notes using WebCT Vista:
The class is to be accessed through the following password-protected web
page:
You must log into WebCT Vista so that your class attendance and progress can be tracked.
Technical Assistance:
For technical assistance, please visit the WebCT Vista Online Support Center.
Logging Out of WebCT Vista
Be sure you log out or close all copies of your web browser, so that others using the computer after you will not have access to your password-protected files.
If you do not exit ALL copies of your web browser, someone using the computer after you could post messages to the e-mail and bulletin board under your identity!!
STATEMENT OF NON-DISCRIMINATION
Georgia Perimeter College supports the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Executive Order #11246, Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. No person shall, on the basis of age, race, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, national origin or disability, be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity of the college.
Any individual with a grievance related to the enforcement of any of the above provisions should contact the Assistant Director of Human Resources, Ombudsperson.
You are expected to read and abide by the General Policies of Georgia Perimeter College, as stated in the College Student Handbook and in the College Catalog.
Tentative Lecture Schedule and Required Readings
Please follow the schedule presented in the WebCT Vista weekly lecture schedule.
This schedule is tentative and may change. All changes will be announced through the WebCT Vista e-mail or the discussion area.
It is your responsibility to check your Weekly Lecture Schedule, WebCT Vista, e-mail (personal e-mail, in addition to WebCT Vista internal e-mail), Discussion board, and Assessments page or you may miss a quiz or homework assignment.
Be sure that you know all of the bold terms in the textbook in the assigned pages. Be sure to think about the review questions at the end of each chapter. Your lecture notes are in WebCT. The textbook does NOT cover all of the material presented in this course. You must read in WebCT.
WELCOME TO GEOLOGY!
Click here to link to Teaching Objectives.
Suggestions for Writing Your Assignments for Geology Classes
1. Must be typed on a word processor, not typewriter, and not handwritten.
2. Must be spell-checked and grammar-checked. I do NOT enjoy having to correct your spelling and grammar.
3. Must be proof-read.
4. Double-spaced.
5. Never in all uppercase.
6. No font size larger than 12 point.
7. No margins over 1 inch (standard setting with word processors)
8. Use subheadings to organize your work.
9. Staple in upper left corner.
10. No folders or plastic covers.
11. Illustrations are helpful (but not included in page count).
12. White paper only.
13. Don't use "its" unless it is a contraction of "it is".
14. Don't use "were" when you really mean "where".
15. The plural of "scientist" is "scientists" with an s on the end.
16. Do not plagiarize. When quoting directly, use quotation marks and provide a reference.
17. Include references within your text, AND a list of references at the end.
18. Always put your name in the upper right corner. If multiple students are involved, alphabetize by last name.
19. Consult a style manual if necessary.
20. Number your pages, bottom center.
GENERAL EDUCATION OUTCOMES:
Syllabus dated January 7, 2007.
Page created by Pamela J. W.
Gore
Georgia Perimeter College