Attendance. Your attendance is required. Unexcused absences will be reflected in your final grade. Of course, sometimes emergencies or other unexpected circumstances arise that make attendance impossible. Just let me know! Afterwards, you are responsible for obtaining the information discussed in class from your classmates. If you will be absent from a class for a university-sponsored activity, please make arrangements with me — beforehand — regarding any work you might miss. If you have a chronic condition which makes it difficult for you to attend class regularly, please speak with me (and the office of Accessible Education) about potential accomodations. To receive credit for an excused absence, you must submit 2 questions using the Critical Thinking Stems and post them to Slack.
Engagement. Student engagement and participation is key to the success of this course. Please come to class ready to discuss all of the assigned materials with your peers and contribute to each other’s learning. Public speaking is hard. But cooperative learning leads to greater knowledge acquisition and retention of information, as well as time management, conflict-resolution, active-listening skills, and much more (Fifer, Brooks, & O’Connor, 2019). Wherever your future takes you, something tells me you will need to engage and collaborate with other humans 🙂
<aside> 🤔 An exceptionally engaged and collaborative student:
✅ Comes prepared to discuss reactions, issues, applications, implications, and research ideas about the materials (readings, podcast, videos, etc) every day
✅ Regularly engages in group discussions, enhancing the depth and rigor of conversation, even when they are not a teacher, even outside of class (e.g., via Slack) (Review Handout: Tips for When You Are Not the Teacher)
✅ Helps clarify their own understanding of course content, and helps others learn too
✅ Contributes insights to whole group discussions and/or amplifies the insights of others
✅ Knows when to listen carefully and respects others viewpoints
✅ Helps their peers become better writers through constructive and thoughtful feedback
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Outside of this class we will communicate entirely through Slack, a versatile platform with dedicated “channels” (discussion rooms) where we can post questions, have informal discussions about course content, and share resources such as podcasts and articles. I will make announcements over the Slack platform and encourage you to communicate with me and each other via Slack. Please join our Slack Community here. Instructions for using Slack and can be found in the #official-announcements channel.
This is a student-led seminar. That means that each student will be responsible for three group presentations over the course of the semester. In these presentations, you and your co-presenter will facilitate a class discussion on the readings. More detailed instructions can be found here:
Handout: Tips for When You Are the Teacher
Over the course of the semester, you will complete the Science Communication Project — a scaffolded learning experienced designed with three main goals:
These handouts pertain to each of the three parts of the SciCommProj.