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ONLINE Schedule | Assignments | Grades | Conduct | Study Guides |
All assignments are due on time--no late papers or late online quizzes. Please note that without an officially documented medical emergency, there will be no make-up exams or incompletes. To obtain this document in an alternative format and request accommodations, please contact the Disability Services Coordinator, 678-466-5445, disabilityservices@clayton.edu
Completion and submission of all assignments are your own responsibility. Your active participation and willingness to keep pace with all assignments are essential to your success in the course.
You MUST check your CSU email account regularly for important notices and updates; this is especially important if you are enrolled in an online version of the course, since we do not regularly meet in person. "I didn't check my email for a few days so I only just got your message" and "I never check that account" are not a valid excuses for missing important course updates, and your grade may suffer as a result.
Our lectures examine each week's assigned topics, readings, and films. Since studying moving images in a static textbook is hardly ideal, each lecture is illustrated with multiple film clips. See the In-class Screening List on the Study Guides page for a complete list of these clips.
For each week, whether on-campus or online:
For online classes, watch the hyperlinked lectures in the order they are assigned. It is in your best interest to keep pace with these lectures and our course material, so plan ahead for this time each week; each lecture is approximately 75 minutes long, and there are multiple lectures assigned each week. Do NOT wait until the night before the exam to watch hours of lectures for that section of the course.
You should view these online lectures only while connected to the CSU network or a high-speed internet connection. If you are working on a dial-up modem or an intermittent wireless connection, these files will take 20-40 minutes just to download and may error out or overwhelm your system. Close all other windows while playing these files; they are quite large!
Also, you MUST have Flash Player installed on your computer to play these clips. If you do not have Flash, you can download if for free at http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html.
The sound quality is best if you use high-quality headphones or external speakers, rather than simply your computer's built-in speaker.
Our Study Clips are required out-of-class exercises on GeorgiaView. They will help you to learn our film terminology and especially to recognize how those terms are employed onscreen. This is the most important skill you will learn in this course, so do not skip these valuable exercises.
A new Study Clip will become available each week as we learn a new topic. It's important to practice the new clip question THAT WEEK, while we're learning its associated new topic, in order to best learn these terms.
You may practice each Study Clip up to 5 times. Your graded score is an average of all 5 attempts, so if you don't score well on the first attempt, you have four more opportunities to bring up your average and to master the terms you are studying.
You may complete all five attempts the week that each Study Clip opens, or you may save one or more attempts until the clip expires. Study Clips 1-11 close the night before the midterm exam; Study Clips 12-19 close the night before the final exam.
Each clip is worth one percentage point of your final course grade; all of the Study Cips together with Quiz 0 add up to 20 points total, so the Study Clips make up 20% of your final course grade. If you earn a "0.7" on a particular week's study clip, then that's 70% of the 1.0 point possible for that clip. If you earn a "1.0" on a study clip, then you earned 100% of that 1% (one percentage point) toward your final course grade.
You MUST have QuickTime Media Player installed on your computer to play these clips. If you do not have QuickTime, you can download if for free at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/.
All pop-up blockers must be turned off on your computer. These clips will open in a new browser window.
You should download and view these online clips only while connected to the CSU network or a high-speed internet connection. These files will take 20-40 minutes to download if you are working on a dial-up modem. If you cannot connect to a high-speed connection, you will find the same clips on your textbook's CD-ROM; you do not need to be online to view the clips from your CD-ROM, and all of the clips are also posted online under our Study Guides.
We will have four announced quizzes. Note that, unlike the Study Clips described above, your quizzes and exams will not be returned to you in this course. Our course doesn't administer quizzes and exams as tools for your study; they are tools of assessment. Many feel that studying a test is an effective learning technique, but it really isn't. A test’s purpose is to measure your mastery of basic film terms and concepts, not how well you know the test. That is, they are opportunities to demonstrate how much you have learned through your committed studies over the course of the semester. The best tools to achieve this level of mastery are to study our lectures, the study clips, the practice quizzes, and the textbook, which is why all are assignments for the course. That said, if you would like to go over your tests privately with me, I am happy to schedule time with you during my office hours.
You also have optional weekly practice quizzes and study questions available via your CD-ROM. These quizzes were designed by your textbook's authors to help you keep pace with your readings. They will help you to stay prepared for class/exams and to better engage with the course material. You should not email me your scores, but I highly recommend that you study with these CD quizzes on your own.
The first one or two quizzes, combined with the first ten study clip questions described above, will comprise your midterm grade for the course. Note that, depending when the Registrar's official midterm grade deadline falls this term, your midterm grade as posted on the DUCK may not be able to include Quiz 2, and it never includes your midterm exam grade. That means that your official midterm grade comprises only 20-30% of your final course average; it's more of an early progress report than an actual 50% midterm grade.
Based on this grade, students may choose to withdraw from the course and receive a grade of "W." Students pursuing this option must fill out an official withdrawal form, available in the Office of the Registrar, or withdraw on-line using the Swan by midterm. Instructions for withdrawing are provided at this link. The last day to withdraw without academic accountability is posted on our course schedule.
The midterm exam and final (cumulative) exams will ask a combination of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-or-false, and film clip analysis questions. No blue books are needed, but always bring two number-2 pencils for in-class exams.