The following can also be found at: https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/zellmer.1/chem1220/chem1220_intro.txt Hello. I am Dr. Zellmer. I am teaching Chem 1220 Spring semester. I apologize if you are getting this and you are not signed up for Chem 1220. I got the current roster with your e-mails from Buckeye Link. Please read the WHOLE message and any to follow. This is just a "little" note to let you know a few things about 1220. Read ALL the following and it will make things easier for you when we start on Monday, 1/9/23. I'm teaching two 1220 sections: T,R 11:10 AM and T,R 3:55 PM. I'll see you in lecture on Tuesday, 1/10/23. Labs meet on Mon., Wed. and Fri. Recitations meet on Mon., Wed. and Fri. (appear as the 55 min 'lab' on your schedule). You have one recitation and one lab each week. There are no labs the first week. All lab sections meet the second week, except Monday (Martin Luther King Day). Monday labs meet for the first time the 3rd week of classes. You'll find the full schedule of labs in the lab syllabus, which is on Carmen (and my personal class web page as well). You need to read the Lab syllabus carefully and if you don't understand it e-mail the lab supervisors. Unless indicated otherwise, all labs are in-person. This is explained in the lab syllabus. Please bring your goggles from 1210, if you can find them, to your fist lab period. If you don't have goggles the TA will give you your first pair. You'll need to purchase a lab coat from the Chemistry Store. This is discussed in the lab syllabus. The lab manuals are in the form of e-texts. See the lab syllabus about how to obtain the manual. All recitations WILL meet for recitation the first week. It is an introductory session and counts toward your final grade. The TA will discuss some course specifics and questions you may have and review some things from 1210. You'll find a full schedule for recitation in the course syllabus. Everyone will take a pre-quiz covering some of the important things you need to remember from 1210 the first week. This quiz will NOT count toward your final grade but will give you and us some idea where you stand with the 1210 concepts. It will be taken on Carmen and will be open until 11:59 PM on Friday, Jan. 13. Details are explained below in the section about Recitations and Quizzes. Everything you need to remember from 1210 will not be on the quiz or covered by the TAs. You should look at the "Notes" link (see below) to see what sections from 1210 I consider to be most important for 1220. If you are on the wait list you are also receiving this e-mail. If you are still on the wait list when classes start please come to lecture and speak to me after the first lecture. You can not attend lab if you're not officially enrolled in the class. Class notes are available (item 1a below) on my class web page (not Carmen). They are not required but having them will make your life easier. They are all there. Some of the links below may not be acitivated yet. Carmen is not ready as of yet either. I will let everyone know when things become activated. 1) I have a web page. The address of my homepage is: https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/zellmer.1 This is my main homepage. You will find my office location and hours. However, I will not likely be in my office much, if at all, this semester. The easiest way to reach me is via e-mail. Much of the material is PDF files so you'll need a PDF reader (such as Adobe Acrobat). Most web browsers generally already have AR as a plug-in or you can easily find and install it. My web page is optimized for viewing with Firefox. There's nothing really fancy so it should work in other browsers. If you scroll down a little you'll find a link to the bookstore location. You may not need this as most course books are now available via CarmenBooks for very reduced costs. You will access Mastering Chemistry via Carmen and you get access to the e-text from there. You're paying for Mastering Chemistry through CarmenBooks. It's explained in the syllabus. You'll find more information about this in syllabus and on Carmen. Then you'll find links for how to study. Read the one for Chem 1220. You will need to approach this class in a way which is probably different than you're used to. This is a tough course, partly because of how fast we'll be moving through the material. I don't have a link for Carmen since most everyone knows how to reach it. We use Carmen to keep track of your grades, administer quizzes and exams and provide some general helpful information. You won't have any grades entered until about the 3rd week of the semester. It is a good idea to check your grades periodically throughout the semester to make sure your TA has correctly entered your grades. The office staff will make announcements via Carmen, many of which I will also have on my web page and send via e-mail. Make sure you set up Carmen properly so these announcements will be e-mailed to you so you don't miss any. This semester you will find pre-recorded lectures on Carmen. There are also modules with pre-recorded topical lectures by another lecturer. Both sets of videos can be found in the "Lecture" module (in Modules). More details below. The lab information with due dates is on Carmen. You will find it in the Laboratory module. There's a Textbook End-of-Chapter (EOC) Exercises and Solutions Manual module in Modules. The module for "Assigned (Highly Recommended) End-of-Chapter Exercises" will take you to my personal class webpages. There you will find the EOC exercises you should be doing as we go along. These should be worked on pretty much every day doing those which correspond to the book sections which were covered in lecture, after reading those sections and doing the Sample Exercises, Practice Exercises, Go Figure and Self-Assessment Exercises. You will also find the publisher's Solutions Manual to the 15th edition end-of-chapter exercises (EOCE) in this module (see item #2 near end of this message). You'll find instructions and a link. You will not be able to copy them or print them. The solutions manual has the solutions to every EOCE. You will be taking several on-line quizzes in Carmen. There are pre-labs which you reach via Carmen. There are also report quizzes for all labs on Carmen. There are some mandatory quizzes at the beginning of the semester and then recitation quizzes just about every week. This is explained in more detail below under the Quizzes and Laboratory sections. If you scroll down a little further, you will see a link that will take you to our 1220 course. There you will find a slightly modified version of the syllabus for the semester. Take a look at it. It has an added page under the "Important Resources for Academic Success" (page 11). That page includes information about suggested Textbook Practice Assignments ( end-of-chapter exercises), Lecture Notes, and office hours (which are also on Carmen). You can find the "official" syllabus (w/o the extra page) on Carmen as well. I won't spend a lot of time on it during lecture. You are responsible for reading it and knowing the information it gives. There's also a Lab syllabus which you need to read. There's also an audio/video version in which I go over the syllabus and other things in details. It's not ready just yet. I'll let you know when it is. You will also see several other links. Take some time to explore the site. This is where you will find a lot of useful info for the course. a) Notes This link has the notes I will be using during the semester. I use overheads. The notes are a copy of my overheads. I cover a lot of things in lecture and it can often be difficult to keep up and make sure you've written everything correctly. I will usually cover 25-35 of these printed pages per lecture (25-35 overheads). I suggest you get the notes and bring them to lecture. It will make it much easier for you to keep up. You will be able to keep up with the examples and write other things I will say that aren't in the notes. Of course you should still come to class or you will miss my pearls of wisdom and more importantly some of the tips I give for things you will probably see on the quizzes and exams. If you have an iPad or other tablet computer there are apps you can purchase which allow you to not only have the pdf files but to also write on them and record the lecture at the same time. This makes it very convenient for later when you are studying and perhaps wish to hear what was said in lecture you can easily get to that part of the lecture if you set a bookmark on the pdf. There's several for the iPad such as "pdf-notes", "notes plus", "PapePort Notes", "Notability", "Evernote" "OneNote". Some of these are also available for Android tablets. "Notability" is installed by default on the university supplied iPads. This app will not only allow you to download the PDFs and write on them but also RECORD the AUDIO. Yes, that little microphone in the upper right-hand corner is for doing this. I also suggest you skim each week's chapter in the book and the notes corresponding to that chapter before we cover it in class (at least 4 sections per lecture). It will make what I'm saying during lecture a little easier to follow. Also, you will be able to keep up with me in class, especially if you are taking notes by hand. It should only take 20-30 minutes for you to skim the chapter's material (don't worry if you don't understand it and don't worry about the example exercises). b) Lecture and Help Videos I have pre-recorded videos up for the material covered each week. You will find these in the "Lecture" module in Carmen. The link on my webpage will take you to the "Lecture" module in our Carmen course. These are not listed by lecture but by the the week in which I plan to cover them. The sections covered in each recording are listed with the link. I'll cover 2-4 book sections in each lecture. You can watch them if you can't attend lecture due to illness. I'm NOT recording lectures. You can "skim" these before lecture (watch them at 1.5-2x the speed) but if you skim the book that should be sufficient. Keep in mind during lecture, if you miss something you can likley find it in one of these videos, so don't be too concerned during lecture if you're having trouble keeping up. Videos from another lecturer can also be found in the "Lecture" module. These will generally be according to topic and not individual lectures covering my notes. You can use these if you're still lost and perhaps want a different perspective. c) "Assigned" (Highly Recommended) Textbook End-of-Chapter Exercises These are NOT for course credit. Here you will find the practice textbook assignments for each chapter. These are the end-of-chapter (EOC) exercises. As an example, for chapter 11, when it shows 2, 4, 6 it means 11.2, 11.4, 11.6, etc. at the end of the chapter. The solutions from the Solutions Manual for the 15th editions can be found in Mastering, as described earlier in this document. Go to the "Homework (End-of-Chapter Exercises) and Solutions Manuals" module and then "Publisher's Solutions Manuals". There you'll find instructions for accessing these. The best way to learn the material in this course is to do ALL the homework I assign. This means YOU must do it and do as much of it on your own without having to follow what's done in the solutions. If you need to look at the publisher's solutions manual (on Carmen), at some point you need to go back and do those problems again or better yet some of the other problems, on your own. You will have to do your own work on the quizzes and exams so if you haven't learned the material you will find yourself in trouble on the quizzes and exams. You should do a problem and then check to make sure you got the correct answer and did it in a correct way. Getting the correct answer for the right reason is important. You need to make sure you get each one correct before attempting the next question. You don't want to do a whole bunch of problems only to check them and discover you did them all incorrectly. Then you have to redo them and you wasted a lot of time doing them wrong the first time. These are in addition to the on-line homework, which are GRADED I don't collect or grade these recommended EOCEs. It's up to you to do it but I can pretty much guarantee you will not do well on the quizzes or exams if you do not do the assigned problems from the book. My suggestion is to do these assigned problems from the textbook first before working on the on-line homework. This will give you some practice before doing the on-line homework so as to improve your performance on those and maximize your score. You can use these problems to practice w/o worrying about losing points. That means you want to try to answer the questions and you don't have to worry about getting them right. That is often the biggest obstacle for people, the fear of being wrong. You don't have to worry since these aren't worth points. Plus, if you get stuck you have the solutions' manual for hints and to see if you got them right and for the right reason. Ultimately though, it is your choice which order you do things in. The main point is, the more practice you have the more likely you are to succeed. Remember, the on-line homework has due dates. d) On-line Homework - 10% of the course grade We will be using the Mastering Chemistry on-line homework system. There will be due dates for all these assignments. If not done by those due dates you'll wind up getting ZERO credit. I won't extend due dates unless I do so for the whole class, which will only occur if we don't get to the material in class as planned or there's a glitch in Mastering affecting the whole class. If you miss an assignment due date and have a valid written excuse contact me as soon as possible (w/in 24 hours if possible) My suggestion is to do the EOCEs in the book from those "assigned" on my web page (explained above) first. When you get stuck you can use the solutions manual for hints, help and feedback. You should practice with these from each section as you're learning the material in each section. Then use the on-line Mastering homework problems as a review before the quiz. The due dates for the on-line homework problems may extend beyond the date of a quiz for which you need to complete some of the problems w/in a set. I'll let you know which ones you should try to complete before a quiz if you plan to use these as a review for a quiz. Generally, things will be due on Friday and Saturday and available for about 1 week before that. That means you don't have to wait until Friday or Saturday to start them, those are just the final due dates. A homework set doesn't have to be completed in one sitting, you can go in and out and thus do a little at a time so you don't get overwhelmed and have time to think about things. There are two types of problem sets FOR CREDIT, "Tutorials" and "Homework Review". There is one type of problem set which is NOT for credit, "Exam Prep Questions". It is marked as a "tutorial" but is not for credit. These are explained below. FOR CREDIT: The "Tutorials" sets are FOR CREDIT. These provide in-problem hints. You will lose a small fraction (2%) for each hint you use. This is a small penalty but try to only use them when necessary. There are penalties for wrong answers (3%). From student comments from previous semesters these seemed to be the most useful and liked. There's also "Homework Review" sets which are FOR CREDIT. These are a little more similar to those from the textbook. These will be set up to ask several questions for each section. There are penalties for wrong answers and if there's any hints they are treated the same as for Tutorials. I've set up both the "Tutorials" and "Homework Review" so the problems are presented by section in order of the sections in the book. Both of these sets ARE FOR CREDIT. This is a limited number of questions and will not suffice if you expect to learn the material well and do well in this class. I suggest you do some EOCEs from the textbook as we go along and use the MC graded homework as your review for the quizzes. This way you can maximize your course points from the MC homework since you will be less likely to miss these questions having done some from the textbook. They can be very similar. You have to do problems more than once and review before quizzes anyway. You could do MC first and then use EOCEs as your review. It's up to you. There are due dates for the MC problems. You can always do MC problems, even if past the due date. However, NO credit is given for late work, NOT for credit: There will also be a set called "Exam Prep Questions". These are the "Exam Prep" exercises at the end of each chapter. Not all of these are included in Mastering. These are set up with "due dates" of the Sunday before the midterms covering that material. These are NOT for credit. They are generally labled like "Ch 13 Exam Prep Questions - NOT FOR CREDIT". Use them as extra practice if you need it after taking the practice exams which you will find on Carmen the week before a midterm. Time yourself (give yourself 2.5 min per question). The MC questions consist of a wide range of difficulty levels, from very simple to a little tougher. However, in general the EOCEs tend to be a little more difficult so it's very important you do the assigned EOCEs. These will tend to prepare you better for the quizzes and exams. To this end, I'll try to limit the number of on-line questions. e) Mandatory Quizzes There are MANDATORY quizzes on Carmen. A couple of these deal with the course on the whole. There are also other quizzes or forms you must take dealing with lab. You MUST take the Academic Misconduct (COAM) quiz on Carmen and get a 100% by 11:59 PM on Sun., 1/15/23, or you WILL FAIL the course. It will be available when Carmen opens but you may want to first read the syllabus. You can take this quiz multiple times and MUST get 100%. Since it allows multiple tries, Carmen may still state you have the quiz to take even after getting 100% until after the quiz closes on 1/15/23. Once you get 100% on the quiz you are done with it. It is your responsibility to make sure you've taken the quiz the deadline and have received 100%. You MUST take this quiz even if you already have done so in a previous course. There are other mandatory quizzes and assignments you have to complete. You'll find all of these on Carmen in the "Mandatory Introductory Assignments" or "Laboratory" modules. The due dates are shown in Carmen. f) Recitation (Reviews & Quizzes) - 8% of the course grade All recitations are in person. There are no on-line sections. I've allocated points for both recitation attendance and quizzes. Attendance in recitation is worth 10 pts for each recitation as marked in the schedule in the syllabus. The quizzes are worth 40 pts each. There are no "activities" per se, during recitations. You should come prepared with questions. These can pertain to lecture, textbook, EOCEs, etc. The TA will address these questions. This is not a time or place to learn new things. You need to have 90% of your questions answered before going to recitation. We want to make sure you get your last-minute questions or misunderstandings cleared up before the quiz. That certainly means doing EOCEs from the previous week's material before going to recitation. It's a good idea to send questions to your TA the day before your recitation so they can prepare something for those questions in order to get as many answered as possible before the quiz. Your TA will tell you how they prefer to handle this (e-mail, Google doc, etc.). You get 10 points for attending recitation. When you come in the room you will sign in using your first name and last name.# (e.g. Robert Zellmer.1). You need to also enter the time you arrived. You have to be there the whole time to get the full 10 pts. If you come late or leave early the TA will deduct the appropriate percentage of the points. You should actively participate and pay attention. Think of it this way. Participating and paying attention by taking notes will help you learn and retain the material. If you have an iPad, the easiest thing would be to use Notability to take notes so you can look back at them when studying. We will drop (excuse) 2 missed recitations. If you miss for any reason it will count toward the 2 drops for attendance. We don't need a note. There are no make-up recitations. It is not a good idea to miss a recitation. They are meant to help you with questions you still have after doing your studying and book problems. Even though you don't need a note when you miss a recitation it's still a good idea to provide one, just in case you miss more than 2 recitations. Quizzes will be given at the end of every week, with a few exceptions as noted in the syllabus. They will be on Carmen. They will be available 7-10 PM on Sunday. They are approx 30 minute quizzes and you'll have 40 min to take them, plenty of time, if you're fully prepared. The quiz schedule is in the recitation section of the syllabus. You MUST work on quizzes independently, NO group work. You are not allowed to get help from anyone or provide help to others. This is considered academic misconduct. You can use the internet to access the lecture notes, the e-text or the course lecture videos on Carmen. You can not use the internet for help from sources other than those provided by me. You cannot upload anything to the internet, either during or after the quiz. Both of these are considered academic misconduct. However, if you have not learned the material the fact the quizzes are "open book" will not help. If you haven't prepared properly you will not only miss questions but will not likely be able to finish the quiz in the allotted time. The questions and answers may be randomized depending on the type of question. The most important thing is you can NOT return to a question. If you skip a question you can't go back to it. That means you will miss it if you don't answer it before moving on. This is based on "best practices" for on-line quizzes. The quizzes will generally cover what was presented in lecture the the week before the quiz and maybe a little bit from the Tue lecture of the same week. I will let you know in class what's on the quiz that upcoming Sunday. This info will also be available in this section of my web pages and I will e-mail it to you the Friday before the quiz. The quizzes will have different question formats; multiple choice, multiple answer, fill-in-the blank, numeric questions, etc. Some of these allow partial credit. This will be similar to what you will see on the exams. We drop the 2 lowest quiz scores. The purpose of the dropped quizzes is to cover missing a quiz for ANY reason. If you miss a quiz that would be a zero for that quiz and be one of your dropped quizzes. Your recitation total is prorated to 8% of your total course score. Each week or so, but sometime after the quizzes each week, I will release the quizzes so you can see your specific questions and answers. I will post a sample quiz which will be similar to the Carmen quiz and solutions to the sample quiz. You should look at these to make sure you know what you are doing. Sometimes people can get the correct answer with the wrong line of reasoning. You want to make sure you understand the concept so when you see something similar you get it correct. If you are using the wrong reasoning and happen to get a correct answer in one case that may not happen in another case. g) Practice Exams This area of the web site will contain information about the practice exams. The practice exams themselves will be available on Carmen. They are not available as of yet. I will let you know when they are ready. While your exams won't be identical to these practice exams they will be similar. The format will be the same so as to prepare you for the exams. Some of them maybe simply be "paper" exams and not Carmen style exams. h) Exams This area contains exam information, like date and time of the exams and reviews. I will be holding a review session before each exam (generally on the Sunday before exam week). The exams will be given in the evening on Mondays. The actual dates and time are given in the syllabus. They will be in-person exams taken on an iPad. It can be your personal iPad or you can borrow one from the university (there's info about this in the syllabus on Carmen). The exams are mostly multiple choice. There may be a few numeric fill-in-the blank questions, drop-down or fill-in-the blank questions. Some of these can give partial credit. The exams will be given using Carmen. There will be instructions on Carmen concerning the exams. The questions and answers will be randomized. You will be allowed to skip questions and come back to them (this is different than the quizzes). I will say if w/in about a minute you can't figure out how to answer the question or can't get the correct answer, you need move on. You want to make sure you get to all questions. If you get stuck on one and take too much time so you can't get to all questions you might not even get a chance to do ones you could easily answer. If you have time you'll be able to go back to the questions you skipped or had problems with. The exams will be released sometime the following week, after the make-up exams. Carmen will also give you feedback about the average, your score, etc. If you have a conflict with an exam you can sign up for an alternate exam given at the end of the same week as the regular exam. You do this on Carmen. See the "Alternate and Make-up Exams Policy". If you miss an exam and have a valid excuse you may be able to take the alternate exam. If you miss an exam and don't have a valid written excuse you can sign up for a make-up exam given at the end of the semester. The make-up policy and procedure is in the syllabus and details can be found on Carmen. If you miss an exam you MUST register online in Carmen by the dates given there, which could even be the night of the exam. There's info there about what constitutes acceptable excuse and the documentation. This MUST be in the form of a WRITTEN excuse covering the DAY of the exam. Details of what is considered a valid excuse can be found on Carmen. I am not responsible for determining if an excuse is valid, that is up to the office. It is NOT a good idea to make up an excuse simply because you are not ready for the exam that day. If you are not ready the day of the exam, you will not be any better prepared a few days later. If you are truly sick, see a doctor and get a note. The rest of us do not want you there to make us sick. Besides, once you start an exam that is your score, even if you tell us later you were not feeling well. If you're not feeling well before the exam you need to see a doctor and get an excuse. Make-up exams may be harder than the regular exam. After all, you've had more time to study for it. Whether you use that time or not is up to you. i) Laboratory Normally there would be some helpful things here. However, due to the multitude of changes due to going to hybrid labs last year and now back to all in-person labs this semester it is not possible to update this portion of my web page. You will find a lot of helpful things for each experiment (such as videos about an exp.) on Carmen. See the "Laboratory" module. Make sure you read the lab syllabus. The things you need to do each week for each exp will be on Carmen and communicated to you via your TA and the lab supervisors. There are pre-lab assignments you must complete before the start of the lab period. If you do not complete them before the beginning of lab they will be considered late and not graded (you get zero pts). You can find the help for these questions and the equations you need in the lab manual. You will often have to refer to the Discussion, Procedure and Data Analysis sections. Read these sections and write the procedure in the notebook before attempting these. The links to these assignments can be found on Carmen. These have a time limit. You are supposed to have your lab notebook prepared before lab. See the lab syllabus for what you should have in your notebook when you go to lab. The TAs will check your notebook at the beginning of the period to make sure you've written your purpose and procedure. If it's not done you will lose points. There is an example for what a notebook should look like in the lab manual. At this point I'm not quite sure if there will be reports or just post-lab report quizzes. That information will be in the lab syllabus. If you'll be doing lab reports, there is an example of a lab report in the manual. You can also look at the following link for a complete example, https://uglabs.cbc.osu.edu/gc-labreport/ You MUST get 50% in lab to pass the course, no matter what your scores on the quizzes and exams, no exceptions. What do you do if you miss a lab? The missed lab policy is in the lab syllabus. Follow the instructions in the lab syllabus and Carmen. Everyone MUST have the 2022/2023 lab manual. You can NOT use a previous edition of the lab manual. The lab manual is in the form of an online eText. Instructions for obtaining this is in the lab syllabus and Carmen. For this semester there are several options for notebooks. After lab you will upload a PDF copy of your notebook to Carmen no matter what option you use for your notebook. You will be allowed to use Notability on your university supplied iPads as your notebook. It is easy to save a PDF and then upload this to Carmen. This will be the easiest most straightforward option. If you use this make sure your iPads are fully charged and you bring your charger with you. You can purchase a lab notebook or just a regular notebook with grids or lines. You would then take pictures/scans of your notebook pages, put them in a PDF and upload the PDF to Carmen. As mentioned above, there is a separate lab syllabus with details about lab. It will be found in Carmen and my class webpages. j) Helpful Tidbits Here you will find some of what I hope are some helpful faqs. Many of these were generated as answers to student questions over the years. Take a look at what's here and remember to look here first before e-mailing questions. You will find some of these same links elsewhere on the class web pages. k) Tutorials This section contains links to some other web sites, both internal OSU Chemistry links and external links. I make no guarantees as to their accuracy and have no control over such. l) PHET and Molecular Workbench These sites contain what looks to be some useful simulations. Again, I make not guarantees as to their accuracy or helpfulness. m) Corrections Here you will find corrections to the book, notes, homework solutions, etc. Always check this link when printing notes, looking at solutions from the book or my web page. If you find any mistakes let me know so I can update this. This is under construction. 2) You will find the instructions for accessing the publisher's solutions manual at the "Textook End-of-Chapter Exercises and Solutions Manuals" module link in Carmen. This manual contains solutions to ALL end-of-chapter EOCEs in the textbook. It shows the setup and not just the answer. I suggest each time you complete a problem you look at the solution, even if you get the "correct" answer. Sometimes you can get the "correct" answer for the wrong reason. Faulty reasoning may work in one case but not another. However, don't use them as a crutch. Access to the solutions for the 15th edition is on Carmen. 3) See the lab syllabus to find details about missing a lab. If you know you will be missing more than one lab you need to contact the lab director or Undergrad office beforehand to see what, if any, arrangements can be made. 4) If you are still on the wait list please attend lecture the first week. You can NOT attend the first lab if you are not officially enrolled in the class. You can check-in once you are officially enrolled. Check with the lab supervisors about any missed lab material. 5) I suggest you review the 1210 material listed under the "Notes" link, https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/zellmer.1/chem1220/notes/notes_1220.htm. There is a list of sections from 1210 at the top of that page. That is the most important material from 1210 needed for 1220. There is also some pre-recorded lectures dealing with chapters 11 and 12 on Carmen in the "Lecture" module. You may want to view these. 6) There is NO extra credit. Do not ask at the end of the semester to do extra credit because you aren't going to pass or get the grade you wanted. I'm sure you know during the semester whether or not you are doing okay. If you aren't sure, ask me. Getting 40% on the quizzes and exams is NOT okay. You are not likely to pass the course with that kind of performance on the quizzes and exams. Do NOT plan on your lab helping that much if you are doing poorly on the quizzes and exams. The lab is worth only 20% of your total grade. The same for the on-line homework. The average for on-line homework is rather high and very bunched up (most scores are close to the average). This is only 10% our your total grade. The other 70% depends on your quizzes and exams. Do not bother the TAs about your letter grade. They do NOT know the grading scale and do NOT speak for me. If you have a question about how they've graded a lab report, you must speak to them or a lab supervisor within 1 week of said graded item. After that time period they may not remember exactly why the took points off and will not be able to correct any mistakes they may have made in grading. If you have a question about grading on a quiz you need to contact me directly. See #7 below about regrading. An explanation about grading and the grading scale is in the syllabus and explained on Carmen. Sometimes people worry about the fact you have quizzes and other lecture sections may not. I always get questions about whether this would affect your grade if our recitation sections have a lower average than the other lecture sections? It will be taken into account in some way and will not have a detrimental affect on your letter grade. 7) Regrading. Any requests for regrading must be made within 1 week of the receipt of a graded lab report, quiz or exam. For lab reports and recitation activities, it is best to ask the TA first before coming to me or the lab supervisors. 8) I have a couple of links on my main web page about studying for this type of course. I highly suggest you read them. I will be sending the links in a follow-up e-mail. This course is very different than most courses you've taken. You will need to put in more time than you likely have in other courses, including 1210, and well more than you put in during high school. 9) Cancellation Policy: I will NEVER cancel anything (class, lab, recitations, exams, etc.) via e-mail. The only time anything will be canceled is if OSU cancels classes for the university (which you will find on OSU's webpage) or you hear from me via e-mail pointing you to a link on my homepage about the cancellation. If there's no link then it's not likely the e-mail was from me. We've recently been informed if OSU officially cancells classes we are allowed to hold remote on-line classes. We will let you know if the situation arises. If your TA is not in lab or an in-person recitation 5 minutes before the start of lab or recitation when it's supposed to start please send one person to 110 Celeste or call the office at 292-6009. Do NOT leave. Please e-mail me as well. A TA will never cancel a lab or recitation for any reason. They are not allowed to. These decisions will be made by me, the lab director, the department or the university. As a matter of policy, TAs are not allowed to make any changes to the syllabus or class requirements. I do everything I possibly can to make sure you get every class you've paid for. In 30 years of teaching I think I've missed fewer than 6 lectures. I'll be there or upside down in a ditch or have fallen down the stairs since I'm not going out a whole lot (so please let someone know if I don't show up for lecture so they can look for me). I guess that's about it. I will see you on Tue. 1/10 for lecture. I know you are looking forward to it and you WILL have a good time this semester (see, you are already laughing). It won't be so bad as long as you keep up. It will be terrible if you fall behind. We will do the best we can under these circumstances. We start very soon. You will be quite busy. For now, relax a little longer. Dr. Zellmer