SyllabusAcademicExpectations

=Academic Expectations=


 * Students are responsible** for all the information on the course wiki, including due dates, project requirements, and evaluation criteria, even if they are not explicitly covered in class.

Students need to check their UMF email on a daily basis as **email is the official communication tool of this course**. You must use your maine.edu address for correspondence. Your email correspondence is expected to be professional in its content and style.

Students are expected to **come to class prepared**. That includes that you have read any assigned readings and are ready to discuss them in class, are prepared to contribute to individual and group projects, and have needed materials.

The University of Maine at Farmington is a community of learners. We come together to learn from and teach each other. Inherent in that relationship is an expectation of **academic integrity**, an ethic of scholarship. The UMF Code of Academic Integrity is in force in this classroom, as it is throughout campus. Students are expected to educate themselves about these ethical standards and seek advice from professors when they have questions about academic integrity. The [|**Code of Academic Integrity**] is included in the university catalog and on myCampus.


 * Attendance** and punctuality are professional behaviors expected of all teachers. As future teachers, those same behaviors are expected of you. [|This includes the instructor.] If you must miss a class or be late, you are expected to contact the professor by email or phone prior to the beginning of the class period. Each student is responsible for all information presented in class, all activities completed in class, and turning in all assignments on time. If you are absent, it is your responsibility to learn the missed material by checking with other students. It is not possible to do well in this class without regular attendance.


 * Assignments will be** **turned in on time**. Late assignments receive no credit. If you need more time on an assignment and communicate with me PRIOR TO the class deadline, we can negotiate a new personal deadline. If you make your new personal deadline your work is on time. If you don't, it's late. If you miss an in-class activity that involved sharing your ideas with others and learning from what others have to share, that learning as well as those participation points cannot be made up.


 * Proficiency** is the goal of this course. It's not about getting a grade but rather being proficient in meeting the standards. A project turned in on time that is not proficient in one or more of the standards can be resubmitted for new assessment. You must come see me during office hours or by appointment to get any work reassessed. The resubmission deadline is two weeks after the initial submission deadline. If one or more of the standards still are not met after the first resubmission, you and Dr. Theresa will create a personalized plan for reaching proficiency.

Some projects have a list of **"Deal Breakers."** These are components or elements of a project that MUST be included before the project will be graded. Completed projects turned in, but missing one or more of the Deal Breakers will be returned ungraded.

Some projects are small **group projects**. Each member is expected to contribute significantly to the project and to attend group planning meetings and work sessions. Although group projects generally receive a group grade, at my discretion, I can assign an elevated grade to a team member who made significantly more contribution than the rest of the group or assign a deflated grade to a team member who made a significantly lesser contribution to the group.

Though email is the official communication tool for this class, **questions about grades** or requests for reassessment are best made in person during office hours or by appointment. It is the responsibility of the student to check the grades posted in Blackboard.


 * Uploading Work in Tk20 ** **- **UMF Teacher Education programs, like the schools you’ll teach in, strive towards quality education for all students and continuous improvement in the ways they carry out that education. One of the many ways we monitor the quality of our education programs is that we periodically ask students to upload an assignment or work sample in Tk20. In addition to the feedback and grade you receive from your professor (in Blackboard, on paper, or in person), these assignments are evaluated in Tk20 using a rubric addressing Maine’s Common Core Teaching Standards. Meeting these standards by the time you graduate from UMF is a requirement for all students in UMF Teacher Education programs; we use these evaluations to track progress towards proficiency over the course of your Teacher Education program. Using these evaluation results, alongside feedback from current students, alumni, and Maine educators, faculty members make changes, as appropriate, to UMF’s Teacher Education programs to ensure the continued high quality of UMF Teacher Education.

Please **retain all completed work** for the course, including confirmation emails sent by Dr. Theresa, until after you receive your grade from the registrar and confirm that it is the grade that you expected for the course. Additionally, you are expected to **keep backup copies of all digital work**--blog entries, papers, assignments, projects, etc. It is highly recommended that you not wait until a project is finished to make a backup, but rather, make backup copies all along so that if your most recent version of a project gets corrupted, you don't have to start from scratch but can go to the last backup copy and work from that.


 * Statement on Equal Opportunities** - In Accordance with the Americans with Disability Act, students who have documented disabilities will be provided with appropriate accommodations. You must request accommodations in a timely manner through official university documentation. Contact the Learning Assistance Center (207-778-7295). Then we can discuss, confidentially, how I might best help you.

A general rule of thumb of **work expectations** for college courses is that for each credit hour, expect to spend 2-3 hours per week per credit hour outside of class preparing for that class. That's time spent reading, studying, and working on assignments and projects. For a 4 credit hour class (or a 2 credit hour class that is taught in half of a semester), that's 8-12 hours per week. If you're taking 16 credits, that's 32-48 hours a week of "homework". College is a full-time job.

Each course project will take significant **time** to complete. Class time will focus on introducing new information and skills, discussions, and sharing and processing work. Little class time may be available to work on projects. Make sure to speak up in your groups when determining meeting times or techniques (if everyone says they'll communicate via Facebook but you don't have or want a Facebook account, speak up). Students are expected to have access to **technology** outside of class ([|a viable laptop that meets department expectations]is required for all Secondary/Middle EDU classes except EDU 101/100; UMF provides 24-hour computer labs) and to put in the time necessary to complete the projects prior to the due date. **Grades** will be assigned based on the key characteristics described in the project rubrics. "Spending a lot of time on the project" or "working hard on the project" is not sufficient by itself to determine the final grade on a project.

All **formal written work** must be free of typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors. This, too, is a professional behavior expected of all educators. Some strategies:
 * Take advantage of the spell checker and thesaurus in the word processor.
 * Have a friend or colleague proofread your writing for typos, style, and clarity.
 * Use text-to-speech capabilities to have your computer read your document aloud to you. It will read what you actually wrote and not what you think you wrote.
 * There are people and resources at your disposal at The Learning Commons located on the first floor of Mantor Library.
 * Enjoy these "AllGrammarCartoonVideos" as collected by Dr. Ann Marie Wolf.
 * I**ntellectual property** must be respected at all times. Direct quotes (including text that is copied and pasted from a website) must be quoted and cited; credit must be given to all sources. Resources for doing this correctly are available on [|UMF's website about synthesis].
 * All writing must meet the standard for conventions of written English as described in the rubric below ([|from Falmouth High School]). Any writing posted on the Web or that is included in a summative assessment that does not meet the standard will be returned and will not be assessed.
 * || **Does not meet the Standard** || **Partially meets the Standard** || **Meets the Standard**
 * (Proficient)** || **Exceeds the Standard** ||
 * **Conventions of Written English** || Writing reveals little command of the conventions of written English. Errors seriously diminish meaning || Writing reveals an inconsistent command of the conventions of written English. Errors are frequent or diminish meaning || Writing shows a clear command of the conventions of written English. Errors may reveal some carelessness in proofreading or editing but do not significantly diminish meaning || Writing exhibits excellent command of the conventions of written English. Minor errors have no impact on meaning. ||

Grading is according to these scales.
 * A || 4.00 || 93.0% - 100% ||
 * A- || 3.67 || 90.0% - 92.9% ||
 * B+ || 3.33 || 87.0% - 89.9% ||
 * B || 3.00 || 83.0% - 86.9% ||
 * B- || 2.67 || 80.0% - 82.9% ||
 * C+ || 2.33 || 77.0% - 79.9% ||
 * C || 2.00 || 73.0% - 76.9% ||
 * C- || 1.67 || 70.0% - 72.9% ||
 * D+ || 1.33 || 67.0% - 69.9% ||
 * D || 1.00 || 63.0% - 66.9% ||
 * D- || 0.67 || 60.0% - 62.9% ||
 * F || 0.00 || 0.0% - 59.9% ||

The following ranges are implied in the table above: A: 3.68-4.00; A-: 3.34-3.67; B+: 3.01-3.33; B: 2.68-3.00; B-: 2.34-2.67; C+: 2.01-2.33; C: 1.68-2.00; C-: 1.34-1.67; D+: 1.01-1.33; D: 0.68-1.00; D-: 0.34-0.67; F: 0.00-0.66

//Thank you to Dr. Mike Muir and Dr. Rhonda Christensen for sharing their syllabus content and format and to students from prior semesters who asked great questions and helped me make these expectations clearer.//