How do I contact the Instructor ?
The Instructor can be contacted by e-mail
at rollinsondr@hellokitty.com
or at rollinsondr@yahoo.com
These addresses are for general messages - not for Essays or Reading Reports unless you are in a 400-level course.
Should I use those e-mail addresses to send in my Essays and other work ?
No. If you are in a 100-level Course, you should use the Course email addresses.
There are separate e-mail addresses for each particular Course - the Course Pages will inform you where to send your Essays and other work.
How do I get an "A" on the Course ?
There is a special Page to help you "Go for the A".
I have registered for a Web-based Course - now what do I do ?
Go to the Web Pages for your Course, browse through them to see what the Course will involve, and send the "Contact Information" to the Instructor.
May I start working on the Course before the beginning of the Semester ?
Yes, when you have registered with the ENMU Administration you may start as soon as you like.
May I send in my Essays and/or Reading Reports early ?
Yes, in fact I encourage you to send in your work before the due dates just in case there are last-minute problems with the computers. You may send your work in as early as you like, though I probably will not grade it until all that group of reports has arrived.
How soon will I hear what grade my work scored ?
If you send your work in on a Monday morning you should receive a grade and some help with questions you missed by the next Monday. Reports do not transfer immediately into my e-mail boxes, and sometimes can take up to 24 hours to reach me. So I usually download all the reports on Tuesday or Wednesday, grade them and write out an answer help page on the next day, and then spend the day after that e-mailing each student individually.
Are grades posted on a Web Page ?
No. For reasons of security I post nothing confidential on any Web Pages. Unless a student chooses to receive grades by snail-mail or some other method I send grades by e-mail to each student individually. Even with password-protected Pages it is possible to hack into them and read any information they contain. For that reason I do not use password-protected Pages.
Why aren't the grades on the "Blackboard™" or "WebCT™" Systems ?
Those systems let every student in a class know who all the other students are in that class. Some students in the web-based courses don't want other students to know that they are taking the class; also I am not sure that any Web Pages (including those produced by "Blackboard" and "Banner") are 100% safe from hackers, so I prefer to use other methods for sending comments and communicating grades.
What do I do if I don't want to receive grades by e-mail
in case someone hacks into my mail box or intercepts the message?
When filling out the contact information for the course you will be given the option of receiving grades by e-mail (weekly), or by snail-mail (monthly), or of suggesting some other method for receiving your grades.
How do I send in a Reading Report ?
The Web-based Courses have weekly Reading Reports which are due by 9 am on Mondays. It is a good plan to copy the questions onto a wordprocessing file, either with "NotePad" or "MSWord", and save it to a diskette in the A drive. Write your answers into that file, save it to the diskette, and then send me an email to the three course addresses given on the Course Pages, with the answers either in the body of the email, or with the file sent as an attachment to the message. Always be sure to include your name in the answer file itself and in the subject line of the messsage.
I'm afraid I might lose my work when I send the answer in
It is a good idea to write your answers out first - use a word processing program and save the file to a diskette in the A drive. Then you can copy and paste your answers into your email message, and still have your file of answers in case anything happens to the email.
How do I send in my Essays ?
Essays are due every 2 weeks. You should send them as an Attachment to an e-mail message, sent to the three e-mail addresses given on the Course Pages
Why are there three differrent e-mail addresses for each Course?
In case anything happens to one of the email providers, or one gets hacked, there will still be another chance of the messages arriving safely. Please send your reports and essays to all three Course addresses
What do I do if I can't send or receive Attachments with my present e-mail system ?
There are a number of places on the Net where you can get a free e-mail box and choose your own e-mail address. Most of the e-mail boxes I use for the Web-based Courses are at such providers.
There is a Page of Free Email Providers where you can find free email hosts.
Yahoo is at http://www.yahoo.com/ - the email box is 100MB, and they can scan attachments for viruses.
How do I send an Attachment ?
An "attachment" is a file that is sent along with an e-mail message.
The easiest way to send an attachment such as an essay to me is to
1. write it with one of the common word-processing programs, such as MS-Word (on all the computers in the computer labs), make sure that your name is on the page, and
2. save it to disk,
3. naming it something like yourname-essay1.doc
4. Then, if you're going to use Yahoo mail (Hotmail see below), go to your e-mail box, and
5. choose "compose" from the side menu to compose a message.
6. Put something like "Yourname Essay 1" in the Subject line, and then
7. a short message in the message text box, eg. "Here's Essay #1 from Your Name", then
8. look below the message text box, and you'll see a message line called "Attachments" and a button to the right of it saying "edit attachments"
9. press the "edit attachments" button, and a new little box will come up on your screen
10. press the button which says "Browse", and another box will come up on the screen. (I'm using one of the computers in the 900 Computer Lab, so I can tell you what happens if you use one of them)
11. If you saved your essay on a disk in the A drive (which I recommend), use the drop-down menu at the top of the new box, labeled "look in" to locate the A drive, click on that, and then locate and click on your essay file.
12. after you double-click or open your essay file, the box should go away, and in the earlier box you'll now see the file-name and path of your essay file.
13. Click on the "Attach File" button. When it has been attached to the message, a little box at the bottom will display its name in the list of "attached files"
14. If you're only sending one file just click on the "done" button, and you should be taken back to the original message screen. If you want to send several attachments, repeat steps 11-13 until all have been attached, then click on the "done" button.
15. put the e-mail addresses I've given you for the Course in the message line, and put your own e-mail address in the Cc: line so that you have a copy in case anything goes wrong with the computers or the e-mail.
16. press the "send" button, and the essay should be on its way !
+++++
However, there are several things that can go wrong, with the result that our computers and programs may not talk to each other. That's why on my 100-level Web-based Courses I want everyone to write a short essay and send it in at the start of the Course, so that we can find out right away if there are problems with our computers communicating, and if my e-mail program can receive and process the attachments your e-mail program sends. Usually there are no problems, or only minor ones, but occasionally a student has had to open one of the free yahoo or hotmail accounts because the original e-mail link wasn't working well.
So that's why Essay #1 is a "test attachment". Just write a couple of pages on what you want to get out of the course, and go through the procedure above, and then you'll know how to get all your essays to me.
How should I identify my work so that it does not get mixed up with someone else's ?
Always include your name at the top of any wordprocessed file of answers or an essay.
Always use your name as part of the name of the file, eg. ASmith-report1
There are several things you should do when sending an Attachment :
1. make sure that your name, Course Name, and Essay Number are actually in the document, preferably at the head of the document
2. name the document file something like "Course Number - Essay Number - Your Name"
3. in the body of the e-mail message, say something like "here is Essay Number from Your Name"
4. in the "Subject" line put something like "Course Name, Essay Number, Your Name"
What is the College policy on Academic Integrity ?
To quote from the 1997-1999 Undergraduate Catalogue, pages 35-36 :
"Academic Integrity :
Students are responsible for . . . demonstrating attainment in an honest manner. . . Cheating, plagiarism, or other acts of academic dishonesty compromise the integrity of the academic process and community and are subject to disciplinary action. . . .
Cheating behavior includes but is not limited to:
(a) dishonesty of any kind on examinations, quizzes, written assignments and projects, . . .
(d) obtaining information during an examination or assignment from another individual and/or assisting another to cheat . . .
Plagiarism includes but is not limited to: offering the work of another as one's own; offering the work of another without proper acknowledgment; and/or failing to give credit for quotations or essentially identical expressions of material taken from books, encyclopedias, magazines, other reference works, term papers, reports, or other sources of another individual"
As the Catalog points out, an act of academic dishonesty may result both in grade changes and/or disciplinary action.
I found a really good piece in an Encyclopedia which just fits with the essay I'm writing : how may I use it in the essay without being guilty of plagiarism ?
You may always quote from Encyclopedias and other reputable sources of information - in fact I am pleased when you do, because it shows that you have done some extra research and reading. However, please make sure that you acknowledge your sources :
1. you may use footnotes (at the foot of the page) or end-notes (at the end of your essay), or
2. you may write something such as "Maria Yang writes in her article on Chamber Pots in the Encyclopedia of Everything :" and then copy the passage, either marking it with quotation marks or setting it as a Blockquote in
your text (indented from the margin) or
3. you may write out the passage, marking it with quotation marks or setting it as a Blockquote, and then in parentheses (brackets, braces) give the Source (Author's name, Journal; or Encyclopedia name).
Please make sure that such quotations are relevant to the subject of your essay.
I'm really stuck with my essay, and I found a site on the Net where I can get essays on all sorts of subjects. I bet the instructor won't know that it's not my work, so what might happen if I copy it and send it in ?
You would probably get an "F" for the whole Course. I know those sites. Been there and checked them out - and they're not worth much. In fact I have Web Pages of information for other Faculty, in which I give a list of "Term Paper Mills", and techniques and sources of software for detecting plagiarism. Also, the essays available at the sites usually do not match the topics I set for essays and are written in styles which differ from
the normal student style. So if anyone uses them it's pretty obvious. My advice - no matter how stuck and hopeless you feel - send your own work to me rather than using the cheat sites : You'll learn more, and you'll probably score more.
I do have difficulty writing reports and essays
The Web Courses rely heavily on reading, comprehension, and writing skills. There are several Lecture-based versions of the Survey Courses which would probably be a better choice for anyone who finds it difficult to complete written assignments on time.
I need help with essays and writing
Student Academic Services provides FREE HELP and tutoring for writing skills such as essays.
On the Reading Reports for the Web-based Courses, how do I "write an account" ?
If the question asks for an "account", it generally means just to tell in your own words what happened. Some of the passages are rather long - several chapters of Genesis, for example - and for those you could give a condensed version which covers the main events (and which should probably take about 10 lines). If the question specifically says to write a "brief account" or a "brief summary" then just give the main points - ( who did what, where, when, why, and what were the results )
What is meant by "Key Verses" in courses REL 101 and REl 103 ?
The "Key Verses" are the six Verses from your week's reading which meant something special to you, or which you would like to remember. There are no right or wrong answers - just write out in full the 6 verses from your week's reading which meant something special to you, or which you would like to remember. Writing them out in full will help you to remember them if you need them in the future. The verses should come from the section of Scripture which was set for study during the week.
Why do the Web-based Survey Courses, REL 101 and REL 103, ask for "Key Verses" each week ?
If you were attending my lecture-based Courses you would have a Monday (or Tuesday) Quiz every week, and there would be material to be learned each week and written out from memory on the Quiz. It is difficult to do that with the Web-based Courses, so I allow you to choose what passages you would like to learn, and then write them out (not from memory) as part of the Report.
