Explanation of Quizzes

• Four of the five "units" of the course will have a timed on-line multiple-choice quiz of 20 questions. These will be released to the class after the start of a unit and will be available until about a week after the end of a unit.
• Your grade for this will be determined by the percent of questions you get right. To get an "A" for all the quizzes, you should have a 90% or higher quiz average. For a "B," you should have 80%, a "C" is 70%, and a "D" is 60%.

• A philosophy journal is a record of your own personal reactions/thoughts/experiences about the material we cover in class. It should be your personal reaction to what you study or your (rough) attempt to think about philosophy. It does not need to be a polished "paper." Grammatical errors won't be graded. A philosophy journal is not a daily dairy of what you did. Neither is a philosophy journal just a record of what we discussed in class - it's not the same as class notes. It is your personal reaction to class topics, and usually will take a half-page to a page per entry. 
• Your grade on this assignment will be determined by how many "acceptable" entries you have. If you make 3 entries a week for 8 weeks, you'll have 24 entries, just one entry short of an "A." To get an "A", you must have 25 entries. For a "B", you must have 20 entries. A "C" is 15 entries. A "D" is 10 entries. An "F" is fewer than 10 "acceptable" entries.
• You should "keep" the journal by writing something in it at least twice a week. Make a heading for each date you make an entry - "Sept. 28" - then whatever thoughts you have that day. Each day's entry is one entry. I'll read the entries and decide if they are focused on the philosophy material and if they relate that material to your own life. If they are, you get a "yes" - if they do not seem to be, you get a "no." An entry might be a VERY insightful, VERY perceptive single sentence, a paragraph, two separate paragraphs, or a couple of pages, but anything less than a page may not be a fully-explored "entry." 

• Each on-line reading assignment will have several built-in study questions.  A blank space will be provided for you to answer to these questions in a few lines and automatically send your answers to my email.
• I will determine your grade for the reading assignments by looking at the quantity and quality of your answers, and how much improvement your answers show. To get an "A" for the reading assignments, you should submit at least 75 answers. For a "B," you should send at least 60. A "C" is at least 45 answers, and a "D" is at least 30 answers.  You don't have to do every one of the reading assignment questions.

 

• The class discussions will take place "on line" in the "Class Discussions" Bulletin Board Topic.
• Your "class discussions" grade is based on the quality and quantity of times you participate in on-line class discussions.  To get in "A" in the class discussion, leave 20 quality messages; to get a "B" leave 150; 10 for a "C", and 5 for a "D."  A quality message is one that asks a good question, makes a good response to another student, and in general continues the discussion. For an "A," this works out to 3 to 6 messages in "Class Discussions" per week in the 8-week Summer term.) Your "journal" and the "class discussions are not the same--The journal is a place for your private reflections, while the class discussions messages will be read by everybody in the class
• You can participate on-line by leaving messages at any time; there won't be a scheduled required class meeting time. 

• Three of the five units will have a short writing assignment that asks you to respond to one or two questions in a one-page essay.
• Your grades for these will be based on the quality of your essays. They should be written in standard, formal English. You will be able to work on them on-line all through each unit, and be able to go back and revise them before you submit them to me for grading and comments.
• These will all ask you to apply some theory to a particular "case" in ethics, usually drawn from Theater or Sociology.

On-line Office Hours (available for WebCT CHAT): Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, 1:30-2:30 p.m. (Central Time) and by appointment. I always check my E-mail at these times. For those of you who use AOL's Instant Messenger feature, my screen name for IM is "DrJohnWager." I will have my AOL IM session open when I have on line office hours, so that's the easiest online way to contact me "live."

My Triton Phone is: (708)456-0300 ext. 3327 or my home number is (708)415-1302. (In the summer, my cell phone is a much better way to reach me than using my Triton phone number.) Don't hesitate to call me at home if you need to contact me! Regular campus E-mail: jwager@triton.cc.il.us (This is an E-mail address you can use in addition to the built-in WebCT E-mail feature.)

The best way to reach me is to leave me a message is in the "mail" feature of your course.