Course
Expectations
-- H. H. Williams
The
basic course meets in 2, 50-minute periods per week, with one additional
3-hr lab period. At Wheaton College, the institution expects you to put
in about 2 hours of work outside of classtime for each 50-minute period
that you spend in class. Thus, in order to make satisfactory progress
in this course, you should be spending a minimum of 13 hours a week on
the material--reading, writing, working with your group, collecting data
relevant to your project, reviewing your notes. If you wait until the
last minute to do this work, (say, until the weekend before the first
exam), then you will have 36 hours of work to do in the 48-hour weekend,
even before you attempt the exam. Don't make this mistake. College should
be your full-time job. (That's why most colleges require that you
live on campus!) If you don't treat it that way, you're wasting your
time and money. Take all that you can get from here! And that especially
includes KNOWLEDGE!! If you are not being asked
to work this much in any of your other courses, you are getting ripped
off. Demand more from your professors. It's your future that you're paying
for now. Be sure to get what you pay for!
I expect you at all times to abide by and uphold the Wheaton Honor Code.
And I expect you to provide me with due notice if you are unable to complete
an assignment or exam on time.
In return, you can expect me to do my best to treat you at all times with
respect as responsible adults. I promise to do my best to answer all of
your questions and respond to all of your suggestions so that we can all
be effective partners in learning. Please
let me know if there is any way that I can help to improve your learning
in this course.
Other
Expectations
Teaching
Methods
When
you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth
to see the light - you'll never forget it.
--Carl
Sagan
Students are expected to come to class ready and prepared to actively participate in classroom activities. (That means you will need to have done the reading and any other “legwork” beforehand!) As I said elsewhere, there will be fewer lectures than many classes you have had in the past or will experience in the future. As a consequence, much more of the responsibility for learning will fall on YOU--the learner-- than you may have experienced before. One of the course expectations, then, is that you will be an active rather than a passive learner--continously seeking understanding and improvement. To do so effectively, you will need to think critically at all times about what you are learning, and how you are learning it.
--John Carolus