There are three grading components to the course: Exams (50%); Mini- Essay Discussion Posts (20%); and a Post-Seminar Final Paper (30%).
A more detailed discussion of each follows, but in a nutshell here in bold, is the structure. Please read this carefully and understand the following schedule. It is designed so that you can succeed, as long as you adhere closely to it and follow the reading and lecture scheduled as outlined.
Course Process:
In the brief time of the course, we will cover the same amount of material and do the same amount of reading as a course that is, during a full semester, spread out over 16 weeks. There are tradeoffs to this intense format. On the positive side, you cover the material quickly, but it is important to keep a good pace throughout, as there is not the “down time” many people find during the longer full semester. Students who tend to do best, make the course a priority during these few weeks.
Given that the course is less than three weeks, and a total of 10 postings are graded, in order to stay on pace, you should plan on writing a posting several times per week during the course. The good news: If you stay up with the lectures and the ancillary materials provided and do your reading of the news in a timely and focused fashion, you should be in good shape in the course.
You will be taking the exams at home (or wherever you choose that works for you – one of the beauties of taking it online!) but you will need to prepare before taking them. Take this as fair warning— trying to “wing it” will not lead to a good result. The exams are long enough to parallel a “take home” exam from a physical classroom sort of format. The exams are both designed for you to be able to finish well within the timeframe, assuming you have prepared and maintain a reasonable and steady pace.
Relevant Course Milestones & Deadlines for the Course Are:
First Half Assignments: Discussion Posts 1-5 are due by Sept 18. The Midterm Exam should be completed during the Midterm Exam Window, which will open on Sept 18 (at 12:01 a.m.) and close on Sept 30 at (11:59 p.m. U.S. Central Time).
Second Half Assignments: Discussion Posts 6-10 are due by Sept 25. The Final Exam should be completed during the Final Exam Window, which will open on Sept 25 (at 12:01 a.m.) and close Oct. 7 at (11:59 p.m. U.S. Central Time)
Paper (Post-Seminar): Due by Oct. 14 (11:59 p.m. U.S. Central Time) Exams (50%):
We will have two exams—a Midterm (25%) and a Final (25%). The window for the Midterm Exam is Sept. 18 - 30; the window for the Final Exam is Sept 25 - Oct 7. Both exams are of the take home variety, and are open book, open note. It is important that you are able to synthesize the material and make it your own, and express it clearly; the intent of the exams is to help facilitate that.
You can take as much time as you need during the open window. If you feel you need the entire window you may have it, as long as you make sure to turn in the exam by the deadline (11:59 pm of the last day of the respective window). Once the window opens, you can go in and get access to the exam. It would be a good idea for you to download the questions, so you have them available for the entire time you take the exam.
The Midterm Exam will cover the material for Parts 1-5. On the exam, you will choose which question you answer from several possible choices. The essays tend to be “big picture” sorts of questions, in which you will give some detail, but have a sense of how it ties together. Study Guide 1 will help you prepare for the Midterm.
While the Final Exam will build on what we learned in the first half of the course, it focuses on the material from the second half of the course (Parts 6-10). Its format will also be essay, structured precisely as was the midterm. Study Guide 2 will help you prepare for the Final.
In the past, students who have done the reading and thought it through, and who pay close attention to lectures, and thought them through, and made good thoughtful posts, tend to get a great deal out of the class, and to do high quality work on the exams in the process!
In doing your studying and preparation, students typically find the recorded lectures and Study Guides to be good guides in helping you organize the material going into the exam.
Mini-Essay Discussion Posts (20%):
The other 20% of the grade is a function of online participation; for that, you will make at least 10 posts, each worth 2% of the grade, for a total of 20%. The online posts and discussions are a key component of the course, and therefore of your grade.
For each section, you will find either an article to read, or watch a video clip of something from the news, that touches in some significant way on the topic we are covering in that part of class. you can find an article or video clip (and there are literally thousands of examples out there—it is pretty hard to miss on this aspect of the course!).
You will write a post about it, describing it and attaching a clip (preferable) or URL web link (if attaching it does not work). Your post should also tie it to some aspect of what we talked about in lecture or the readings.
Not to worry--there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of examples to be found readily on the internet or your local library or newsstand, of articles or news items about any of the religious traditions covered in the course. Part of this exercise is to get you used to being an educated news reader. Part of that process is to be able to connect what you are reading to what you are learning in your formal education, to do it readily and in a depth that goes beyond a mere surface reading. There is more detail given later in the syllabus.
You will make a post a mini-essay to our class’s CANVAS discussion board for each of the articles you read. In those posts, you should give the members of the class a sense of something you learned in the article, and your thoughts about how it is relevant to the reading in the books or in lecture. The mini-essay should give a sense of something you learned from the article and the related text material. It is also good (not required, but a good idea) to sometimes include in your writing a response to something written by your classmates on the board. You may, for example, find that you read an article that relates to something posted by another student, or you may find you got something different out of the reading. Either is fine, as long as you articulate your position and support it with something from the article itself and from the text material and do so in a mutually uplifting and respectful way.
Assuming your mini-essay post is of the requisite length and complexity (which in this case means about the length of 2-3 paragraphs, 6-8 sentences each), shares something from the reading with your classmates, and has been reasonably thought out, you will receive full credit. If it does not say something that is relevant to what we are covering, appears to be “tossed off,” or is gratuitously offensive, it will receive a zero. For something basically in the ballpark but falling short, you may receive partial credit. You should be able to get full credit in this section of the course, assuming you take it seriously and make the postings in a reasonable fashion.
You might, for example, find a National Geographic article about how rising tides from melting polar ice caps are affecting people some other place on the planet. Or you might find a short Youtube clip about Vertical Farming in an urban setting. The opportunities are virtually endless. You can pick pretty much anything, providing you do a reasonable job of tieing it into what we are covering in the readings.
The posts on our class’s CANVAS discussion board will, I hope, allow us to use the medium of our computers to full advantage, giving us an online parallel to class participation. While only ten posts are absolutely required, I do hope that people will interact above and beyond that via the postings, so that it becomes an interesting discussion board rather than a dry place to simply dump assignments.
Post Seminar Assignment (Final Paper):
A brief paper (approximately 12-14 pages) that is related to one of the topics covered in a part of the course, is required.
Due date for the Class Paper is Oct. 14, 2022.
The class paper accounts for 30% of the grade. You will write a paper (in standard American Sociological Association format, a handbook for which is posted on our class site) building on one of the topics we cover in the class The target length is 12-14 pages, typed, double-spaced. While there is some flexibility here, you should tie your paper into one of the sections of the course. For formatting, use one of the standard formats available. ASA or APA tend to be the most straightforward (and I have provided ASA format here on Canvas).
These guidelines are also quite useful in terms of organizing your thinking for when you write your paper. There are numerous references generally available for virtually all of the major topics we cover. The Burns and Caniglia text also has an extensive bibliography that can serve as a guide. As a target, you should plan on having about 15-20 references for your paper’s bibliography. While it is OK to get a few of those from popular sources, most should be from books or scholarly papers (including, but not limited to, some of the required and recommended readings from the course). Each reference should be properly cited. You can write your course paper building on any of the topics covered during the course.
