Course Policies
Below you will find various course policies, including:
- Attendance
- Reading
- Late Assignments
- Extra Credit
- Lab Conduct
- Cell Phones
- Group Lab Reports
- Studying Biology
- Academic Honesty
- Tutoring
- Accommodations
Attendance
Being in class is important. Based on past experience with this course, it makes a difference. That's why a portion of your grade in this class will be derived from your attendance and participation. We intend this class to be heavily discussion-based, and if you are not here, not only do you not benefit from the discussion, but your classmates won't have the opportunity to benefit from your opinion. And don't forget that it is your responsibility to find out what assignments you may have missed if you are absent.
If you are going to be absent from class or lab, please do us the courtesy of letting us know in advance if at all possible. Don't forget that it is your responsibility to notify your instructors if you will be away for a field trip, sporting event, or other school-related function. It is not our responsibility to keep up with all the myriad activities which you might be involved in, according to the Student Handbook.
Reading
In this course, the reading is critically important. Class time will be spent discussing the reading for that day; if you don't keep up with the reading — and by that we mean active reading, not just using a highlighter — you won't be able to keep up in class, you won't fully understand what's being taught, and the class will rapidly become a waste of time for you.
Late Assignments
Assignments turned in late will accrue a 10% penalty for every 24 hours (or fraction thereof) that they are late.
Extra Credit
On a 100-point hour exam, there will be 105 points-worth of questions. Thus, you can miss (nearly) 5% of the questions on any hour exam and still get the full 100 points.
Cell phones
Cell phones can be very useful tools, but they can also be extremely powerful distractions, as you no doubt realize. In class, and especially in lab, you should not be using your cell phone unless it's directly relevant to the current activity. You should never be checking email or updating Facebook or watching cute cat videos in class or in lab, unless for some inexplicable reason your instructor has okayed that particular activity.
Lab Conduct
There is to be NO food or drink in the lab at ANY time. Rules have gotten stricter, fines have gotten much higher, and the government is coming after undergraduate institutions like never before. If your instructor sees any comestibles or potables in lab you will be docked points in accordance with their mood; if they see you put anything into your mouth while you're in the lab, they may well dock you several hundred (yes, hundred) points. This is a serious infraction of laboratory protocols.
The ONLY exception to this policy is when we are doing experiments with food — we will let you know in advance what is permitted in these labs.
The only thing worse than eating or drinking in lab is endangering other students. If we find anyone doing something which might result in harm to another student, we will fail the perpetrator for the course. We are by and large a fairly easy-going folks, but there are some things which are simply beyond the pale; this is one of them.
Group Lab Reports
Certain labs will require group (rather than individual) lab reports. When submitting group reports, please be sure that you:
- Do not include the questions in your report — Prof. Jones knows the questions!
- Use "we", not "I" — this is to be a group effort.
- Include the title, date, and the names of your group members.
- Every member of the group must initial the report, indicating that they are satisfied with it and agree to its contents.
- When submitting a group lab report, your instructor will provide each of you with a notecard; on this card you will be asked to evaluate the contributions of your group members to the report.
If you have any questions about this format, please don't hesitate to ask Prof. Jones or Prof. Mosovsky.
Studying Biology
Science is a collaborative venture. We urge you to get together with your fellow students as much as possible to study the material for this course in groups. Discussing problems, studying for exams with other students, and asking each other questions on the reading assignments are all examples of activities which will benefit you and which we encourage. Obviously you cannot consult with others during exams or quizzes, but the homework and lab reports may be something of a grey area for many of you. For this course, you must prepare your own answers to assigned problems, but we feel that getting together with other students in the course to discuss and think through problems together is not only perfectly acceptable, it is a very good idea. If you have arrived at what you believe to be the correct answer, put it aside for fifteen minutes before writing it down; this way you can be more confident that you really know what it is you're saying, and your answers won't be identical to your partners'.
Note that the idea of collaborative learning in this way does not mean that you should ask for answers from others who have already taken this or a similar course, nor should you necessarily just accept an answer from a classmate whom you think is likely to be right. Everybody is mistaken sometimes, and if you don't understand why his or her answer is the right one, well, then you don't understand it. And that is not where you want to be. Conversely, if you're sure you've got the right answer, don't just tell your study group and be done with it. Try to help them arrive at the same conclusion you did step by step; someone else may come up with a very different view of the problem which forces you to rethink your approach. And rethinking your approach, even if it doesn't turn out to change your mind about your answer, is critical to your success as a scientist, lawyer, businessperson, whatever. It's one of those skills that you should be constantly honing.
Our concern is not that you "learn" biology, seeing it as a (very large) pile of facts, but that you understand it. Your fellow students and your instructors are resources to help you; it's up to you to do the work necessary to gain that understanding.
You should expect to spend at least 2 hours studying on your own for every hour in the classroom. At a minimum. That's true for every class, not just this one. If you're content to just slouch through, willing to trade a better grade in the course for whatever you think is more important than your studies, you're welcome to do so. But if you want to excel, not only for the sake of a higher mark on your transcript, but also for the sake of your education, you owe it to yourself to put in enough effort that you can honestly say to yourself at the end of the semester, "I did my best, and I learned as much as I could in that course." If you do, we'll do everything we can to make this a worthwhile experience for you.
Academic Honesty
We adhere to the Academic Honesty policy of the College. There is nothing more important to us than personal integrity — not biology, not happiness, not power, nothing — and we conduct ourselves and all of our classes in that spirit. If you're not familiar with College policy, you should be.
Tutoring
The Academic Support Center houses Disability Support and Greyhound Tutoring on the first floor of Monocacy Hall and can be reached at 610-861-1401. Greyhound Tutoring provides course-specific tutors to Moravian students, free of charge. If you would like to work with a Greyhound Tutor to boost your academic success, please request a tutor through http://bit.ly/NeedTutorMC (case-sensitive). Plan ahead! It takes 2–3 business days to connect you with a tutor. Please email Dana Wilson (wilsond@moravian.edu), Tutor Coordinator, for more information about tutoring. Please email Laurie Roth (rothl@moravian.edu), Director of Academic and Disability Support, for more information about disability support.
Accommodations
Per Moravian College policy: "Students who wish to request accommodations in this class for a disability should contact the office of Academic Support Services, located on the first floor of Monocacy Hall (extension 1401). Accommodations cannot be provided until authorization is received from the Academic Support Services office."
For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, Moravian College considers this to be a personal page. Therefore it is incumbent on me to point out that "The views expressed on this page are the responsibility of the author, Christopher Jones (cjones-at-moravian-dot-edu) and do not necessarily reflect Moravian College or Moravian Theological Seminary policies or official positions."