X-hours will be used as
needed to make up missed classes or catch up on material. You
will informed at least two days in advance of the use of an X-hour, but
in general you should keep this hour open in your schedule.
A student enrolled in Math 8 should have successfully completed one of
the following: Math 3, Math 1 and 2, or an AB calculus curriculum.
Math 8 moves quickly, so it is essential that your algebra and trig
(precalculus) be in good working order, along with your differential
calculus (taking and interpreting derivatives).
Calculus, James Stewart,
Sixth Edition
Nearly any calculus book will cover the material we need to cover in
Math 8. If you've found a book that you particularly like,
stick with it. If you have a different form or edition of
Stewart's book, that will also work for your general reading.
In any of these cases, you'll be responsible for acquiring
all the assignment information, reading pages, homework problems, etc.
from your peers or books in the library.
Below is a description of how we “run” our classrooms. This is provided
to you so that you know what to expect, and you understand why we do
the things we do.
We have a lot of material to cover in this course, and the only way we
see to get through it all is if we spend most classes at board
“lecturing.” This does not mean you can sit back, relax, and blindly
write down everything that we do. We’ll ask you questions and expect
you to answer. “I don’t know,” is an acceptable answer. You should feel
free to stop lecture and ask a question. We may ask a student to
explain a concept to the class. Hearing an explanation from a peer can
sometimes be much more meaningful than hearing it from me or reading it
in a book.
What you can expect from
your instructors:
- We will change the plan for the course. Our job is to teach
you calculus. If you aren’t learning the best that you can, something
needs to change, and it will. Expect in-class and BlackBoard anonymous
surveys of your thoughts on the course, and to see incremental changes
in the course based on these surveys.
- We understand that calculus is a difficult subject to
master. We will be patient with you through your struggles, and give
you your fair share of time with us to work through and overcome your
obstacles.
- You can expect timely, yet not immediate, feedback on your
work and course standing. This means you can expect graded homework
returned on Monday, exams returned within a week at the latest, but you
will not receive an answer to a “Can I turn in my homework during
office hours after class?”- email that you send at 3am.
- Expect to be
treated as others are treated: if everyone else turns in a quiz after
10 minutes, it isn’t fair to give you 12 minutes.
What you can expect your
TA:
- You can expect Scott to be familiar with your current
assignment and the course material, but not necessarily ready to answer
your questions with a perfectly phrased concise statement… it should be
a discussion.
- Scott is NOT your personal tutor. He is there to answer
general questions, help you complete your homework successfully and
assist you in preparation for your exams. He is also not a solutions
manual that happens to look like a person.
- Tutorial is from 7-9 on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday
evenings. Scott will be there during those times, or have arranged for
another TA to be there. He will not have office hours, nor will he be
expected to stay late after tutorial.
What we expect from you:
- Each assignment has a due date or stop time, and you are
expected to have them turned in by that time, unless prior arrangements
have been made.
- Respectful participation in class: listening, asking
questions, answering questions, not checking email or Facebook, not
doing an assignment for another class, etc.
- Feedback and the effort to make this class your own.
(10%) WEBWORK
There will be daily WeBWork assignments. Each WeBWork assignment will
be open immediately following the corresponding lesson in class, and
due before the start of the next class. The WeBWork
assignments are meant to check if you are understand the basic
definitions, theorems and techniques of the lesson.
You can log in to WeWork
here.
Assignment 0 will remain posted all term with the answers
available and is designed to be an introduction to the WebWork system.
If have not used Webwork before, go through Assignment 0.
For information on the WebWork
(15%) HOMEWORK
The weekly written assignments will be available on BlackBoard on
Monday mornings and will be turned in Friday at the beginning of class.
While these assignments may contain challenging mathematical concepts,
your focus should be in the presentation of the solution. These
write-ups will be returned to you on the following Monday with a credit
or no credit score. You will be given chances to rewrite your
assignment and turn it in on Wednesday. For the first three
assignments, you will have as many rewrites as you need, the next three
assignments you’ll have only one chance to rewrite, and the final four
should be nearly perfect when you turn them in on Friday, no rewrites.
Thus, you should be learning from your mistakes, taking in and
absorbing the feedback we give you, not just blindly making the
suggested changes.
(15%) QUIZZES
Quizzes will be given at the beginning of class each Monday. The
purpose of these quizzes is to keep everyone up to speed in the course.
The difficulty of the questions asked will be somewhere between a
warm-up question and a WebWork problem. The quiz will happen at the beginning of class, take no more than 10 minutes,
and will not be given at any other time unless arrangements are made
before Monday. If you have been keeping up with the reading and
homework and attending class regularly, you should have no problem
getting 95-100% on every quiz. Everyone has bad days, thus your lowest
quiz score will be dropped from your total.
(60%) EXAMS
There will be two exams given during the term, and one cumulative final
exam at the end. Because the final is cumulative, if your score on the
final exam is higher than both of the other exams, your exam score will
be completely based on the final. The point is to learn the material by
the end of the term, so if you show you’ve mastered the material, the
stops and starts of your learning process should not matter. Otherwise,
30% of your grade will be from the final exam and 15% from each midterm
exam. There is more information on exam philosophy, what to expect, and
how to prepare on the Blackboard site under EXAMS.
FINAL GRADES
To assign final letter grades, the instructors will plot the point
totals of all the students in both sections and assign grades based on
clustering and averages. Although this is somewhat “curved” you will
not receive any letter grade lower than the standard percentage grade
assignments allows, i.e. if you earn 90% of all possible points the
lowest grade you can be assigned will be an A-. A grading spreadsheet
is available on Blackboard, and the mean and median scores for quizzes
and exams will always be made available to you. While this doesn’t
guarantee you’ll know your exact standing in the course or “What you
need to get on the final to get a B+ in the class,” you should be able
to keep relatively good tabs on your status.
On Exams and Quizzes: No help given or received. All exams and quizzes
will be closed book. No calculators or computers are allowed.
On Homework: Students are encouraged to work together to do homework
problems. What is important is the student’s eventual understanding of
homework ideas, and not how that is achieved. The Honor Code applies to
homework in the following way. What a student turns in as a homework
solution is to be his or her own understanding of how to do the
problem, and his or her own explanation of the solution. Students must
state what sources they have consulted, with whom they have
collaborated, and from whom they have received help. The solutions you
submit must be written by you alone. Any copying (electronic or
otherwise) of another person’s solutions, in whole or part, is a
violation of the Honor Code.
If you have any questions as to whether some action would be acceptable
under the Academic Honor Code, please speak to your instructor. This is
definitely a situation in which it is better to ask permission than
forgiveness.
Students with disabilities enrolled in this course and who may need
disability-related classroom accommodations are encouraged to make and
appointment to see their instructor before the end of the second week
of the term. All discussions will remain confidential, although the
Student Accessibility Services office may be consulted to discuss
appropriate implementation of any accommodation requested.
Whether
or not you have a disability, the Academic Skills Center is an
excellent place to visit. Take some time to look at their videos and
other resources. Would you benefit from some of the planning tools? Do
you think you could improve your note-taking skills? Is stress eating
your life? You're the only one who knows what might benefit you, and it
doesn't hurt to look.