GG 101 Telecourse Info

Greetings to students of Earth from geology cyberspace. Here are a few comments to get us on the same page to begin the course.

This is a rather long message, but please read it anyway. Remember that reading is a major part of learning, even if it's just administrative information such as this.

Note that the entire course will have been broadcast by approximately halfway through the semester. This does not mean that you should try and rush it. Watch two programs per week to stay within the date guidelines for the exams as shown on the schedule page.

Index to Topics

Save Files	General Comments	Academic Honesty
Study Guide	Reading	Other

SAVE FILES

It's a good idea to create a directory or folder on your computer in which you can store email and other documents. Call it Geology or some such and keep messages you send to me and my messages to you in it. I have folders in which I keep all the email I get from you as well as the email I send to you. You can do this with your UH email accounts.

GENERAL COMMENTS

We will use Laulima for everything. Use the messages tab on Laulima to send messages to the instructor.

Message sent to emial via Laulima or otherwise will go to a very busy account and may not be read promptly.

The message board and chat features of Laulima can be made available for communicating with the instructor and other students in the course.

There is a lot of material online for this course. It may take awhile to get the hang of it. It will help and save both of us quite a bit of time and effort if you read the material on this message.

So please read this and whatever I send to you. It is a waste of time for all concerned if we have to ask and answer questions that are already answered.

I'm a night person so I am online in the afternoon and into the wee hours of the night, but I might be awake and online at any given hour since I have an irregular and unpredictable schedule.

Exams will be available on Laulima throughout the semester. There is a 'schedule' page that lists the recommended dates for beginning each of the four exams. These are benchmarks, or mile markers to let you know where you should be to remain on schedule.

Please help me. When you send a message use the subject heading to let me know what is in the message. I will give priority to 'discussion' messages over procedure questions. If something is urgent please indicate so in the subject, but please don't 'cry wolf' with the urgency.

If you have questions or other issues outside of assignments that you are sending, please send those in a separate message. I will always give personal issues highest priority . If something important is buried in with a question about the textbook there is a good chance that I will not see it right away.

ACADEMIC HONESTY

Everyone should be aware of University of Hawaii policy on dishonesty and plagiarism. The penalties can be severe, from getting an F grade to expulsion from the university. As members of the University community we are bound by these rules and when you sign up for a course you are acknowledging that you know the rules and will abide by them. You are required to sign and return an acknowledgement that you have read and agree. If you have not already done so as part of your check in, copy and paste the following statement into a document and put it in your Laulima Drop Box. You only need to do it one time.

Here is what the University of Hawaii student conduct code says about cheating and plagiarism:

"1. CHEATING includes, but is not limited to, giving or receiving unauthorized assistance during an examination; obtaining or distributing unauthorized information about an examination before it is given; using inappropriate or unallowable sources of information during an examination; falsifying data in experiments and other research; altering the record of any grade; altering answers after an examination has been submitted; falsifying any official University record; or misrepresenting the facts in order to obtain exemptions from course requirements.

2. PLAGIARISM includes, but is not limited to, submitting, in fulfillment of an academic requirement, any document that has been copied in whole or in part from another individual's work without attributing that borrowed portion to the individual; neglecting to identify as a quotation another's idea and particular phrasing that was not assimilated into the student's language and style or paraphrasing a passage so that the reader is misled as to the source; submitting the same written or oral material in more than one course without obtaining authorization from the instructors involved; or dry labbing, which includes obtaining and using experimental data and laboratory write-ups from other sections of the course or from previous terms or fabricating data to fit the desired or expected results."
If there is any part of this that you don't understand, please contact me to discuss it. Otherwise it will be assumed that you understand and acknowledge it."

You can download a pdf file and read the entire code at www.honolulu.hawaii.edu/pdf/scc.pdf.

I will abide by this code and I expect you to as well. Every student must submit a statement acknowledging that he/she has read, understood, and agrees to this code..

STUDY GUIDE

The study guide (suggested but highly recommended) attempts to organize and focus the content of the "Earth Revealed" videos, and the text. It also contains additional bridges to help illustrate the principles or illuminate the people we are studying. The course is designed for you to synthesize material from all the sources. Rarely will you find the answer to a test question in only one place. The more you read (and write) the more you will learn.

To take full advantage of the study guide you should follow the study plan that is outlined at the beginning. This may not be the best strategy for everyone since we all learn in a unique way, but it is a good starting point. Hopefully you will develop your own method after trying the suggestions therein.

It is recommended that you print out the objective for the lessons and refer to them as you watch the program. There is a list of the objectives and questions for the text book chapters as a web page or as a pdf file that can be downloaded and opened with the Adobe Reader.

READING

Please read the information that I send you . Read the online information as well. Any course involves a great amount of reqading and you can not learn without reading.

I get impatient answering question about requirements and other things that are posted online and should have been read. It is much better use of my your time and mine to discuss questions about the material rather than to repeat what I've already written and posted.

Reading a science textbook is not like reading a newspaper.

Geology is a descriptive science that contains many new terms to describe the variety of features and processes that describe our planet. No one can (or should) memorize these, but you will need to understand their meaning in order to comprehend the process.

Many geology students get bogged down in the new terms. If you will pardon the cliche, that is like running into the trees without noticing the forest!

The new words are there to describe new things, just as any word does. There is more disussion about this in program 1.

You may find that you cannot get through a paragraph without stopping to re-read a sentence or to refer to a graphic, look up a work, or go back and review something.

DO NOT BE AFRAID TO READ A SENTENCE, A PARAGRAPH, OR A WHOLE SECTION MORE THAN ONCE.

Sir Isaac Newton, the great scientist who gave us our laws of physics and gravitation, and is considered one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived, taugh himself algelbra and geometry.

He did it by reading until he reached a point where he no longer understood, then he would go back and read what he did not understand over and over until he understood it before he moved on.

Of course, none of us are an Isaac Newton! But the way he taught himself is the fundamental way that we all learn, whatever our individual style.  Watch a toddler learn how to walk if you think learning is, or should be easy!

The text has many graphics that illustrate the features, principles, and processes. There are many graphs and tables that summarize information and comparisons. Spending time looking at these and reading the captions will pay for the time spent many times over. In some cases it may be nearly impossible to 'get it' without benefit of these pictorial aids.

You will find much material on the internet about the topics we cover. Go to the links page and check out some of the links. Most of them will lead to other links to the point of saturation (a hazard of web surfing). A search on google.com by keyword (i.e. "Plate Tectonics") will give you many sources to follow. Learn to use the search capabilities of the web to find information. Google is a good search engine but you may want to try others: Yahoo, AltaVista, hotbot, northernlights are just a few.

Note that Google's 'advanced search' allows you to limit the search to a specified domain. If you use the advanced search and enter '.edu' in the domain field it will return only those pages from US colleges and universities. '.gov. will limit the search to U.S. government sites such as USGS (US Geological Survey). There is a lot of quackery and fringe material on the web that may mislead you when you are trying to get good information.

OTHER STUFF

I recommend that you write the dates for the exams and the field trip paper on your calendar right now. You do have a calendar, don't you?! Find these dates on the online broadcast schedule page .

If you have questions on the programs, the texts, the study guide, or the online materials write and ask me. You will also find that other students can help. We are all part of a learning community and it is all too easy to feel isolated in an unusual learning environment such as this.

Most of you are not veteran email users and probably feel awkward writing, let alone writing to "strangers". It takes awhile to for the thoughts to get from the brain to the fingers. The more you write, the more you will learn to make that connection and the easier it will get.

There is no better way to learn, and to learn to think than to write. I am encouraging you to write, write, write, even if you don't send it to anyone. It is a good way to find out if you understand something, and a good way to learn to think about any topic.

Although all of this may seem difficult some students actually survive it each semester!

But seriously, it is very difficult to get less than a "C", and the average grade has been "B". Although I can't guarantee a particular grade, I can guarantee that you will get out of no more than what you put into it, and that you will feel really good about your accomplishments at the end if you care and work at it.

If you've read this far, please send a note to me at Laulima to acknowledge.

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