Introduction to Sociology (Summer 2012) online students, read the information below:
Hello! I am really looking forward to teaching you this semester. Please read through this message carefully all the way to the end (where you will see my name).
IMPORTANT NOTE: All of my online students are required to come on the main Palomar campus at San Marcos to take two major exams during the summer semester (you will have to bring along a photo ID). Please note that I will NOT make any exceptions to this policy of taking the major exams on campus. You are required to take your midterm on Saturday, July 7th, and your final exam on Saturday, July 28th. (There will be two time slots to choose from, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.) I will personally proctor both of these exams. If you are unavailable to come to campus on these two dates, you will need to drop the course.
We will be using Blackboard, an online learning system, for this online Introduction to Sociology class. Most students find this program very easy to use. (I know that many of you are already familiar with Blackboard because it is used in many college courses.) If you are already registered in this online class, you will have access to our specific class Blackboard site on Sunday, June 17th, the day before the semester officially begins. If you register in my online class after that date, you should have access to our Blackboard site within an hour after you officially register for the course. Be sure to go to our class Blackboard site by Monday morning (June 18th), so you don’t get behind in the class assignments.
The on-campus orientation for both sections of this class is on Monday, June 18, from 10-11:00am, in room LL-109, in the library on the San Marcos campus. Important note: If you are not yet registered by the first day of the semester and are trying to crash the class, you need to come to the orientation. If you don’t come to that orientation, the crashers who do show up will have priority over you with regard to being allowed to enroll in the class if there are any available spots.
If you are already registered in my class AND already know how to use Blackboard in online classes, you are NOT required to come to the orientation on campus, but you MUST log in to Blackboard, read the announcements that are already there, and post to the Introductory Forum on the Discussion Board by 9:30am on Monday, June 18th, so I know you intend to stay in the class. If you don’t either do this short writing assignment by 9:30am on Monday, June 18, or show up at the orientation that day, I reserve the right to drop you from the class to make room for crashers who show up at the orientation.
If you are registered in the course and decide to drop it for whatever reason, please do so officially as quickly as possible because there are always people on the waitlist before the semester begins and people who will try to crash the course after the official start of the semester. As soon as one student officially drops, another student can get into the course.
The official waitlist for this class (each section) holds five people, and the last day to get on the waitlist is Tuesday, June 12th. If the waitlist is currently filled, keep trying each day through June 12th to get on it. As people who are currently enrolled change their plans before the semester begins and officially drop the course, others are transferred from the waitlist to the official roster, thus opening up new places on the waitlist. (Please note that this auto-transfer from the waitlist to the official roster only gets done every couple of days, so for a few days at a time it may look like the class roster has a few openings when it really does not.) On the morning of Wednesday, June 13th, the people in Admissions will do the last transfer of people from the waitlist to the official roster, providing, of course, that there are any open spots in the class at that time. As noted on page 49 of the Class Schedule, if you are automatically added to the official class roster from the waitlist at any time, your account will be charged with the enrollment fees. You should check your schedule online to confirm your status.
If you are on that official waitlist at the time the waitlist ends (at the end of the day on Tuesday, June 12th) but don’t get automatically enrolled by the people in Admissions on Wednesday, June 13th (because the class is already full and there is no room for additional students), e-mail me between Thursday, June 14th, and Sunday, June 17th (at 9:00pm), and I will give you a permission code to add the class. (What I am saying is that you are guaranteed a spot in the class if you are on the official waitlist and contact me for a permission code between those dates.)
If you are on the official waitlist at the time the waitlist ends and do not contact me requesting a permission code by Sunday evening, June 17th (at 9:00pm), you are no longer guaranteed a spot in the class and would have to try to crash the course like anyone else who was interested in the course and not yet enrolled.
If you are a registered student in one of my online classes or are on the official waitlist for one of my online classes, e-mail me at professorlesyna@gmail.com whenever you need to e-mail me. Please sign your complete name to the e-mail and identify your five-digit class number (for example: Maria Gonzalez, 50131). It’s extremely important that you include your name and the five-digit class number in every e-mail that you send to me throughout the semester. (Please note that your five-digit class number may be different from the one I used in the example above.)
If you are NOT already one of my registered students or on the official waitlist for one of my classes, then all e-mails to me should be sent to klesyna@palomar.edu.
To access our class information on Blackboard on or after Sunday, June 17th, registered students should go to https://learn.palomar.edu/webapps/login/ and input your username and password from eServices in the appropriate boxes. If you successfully log in, you will come to a page with various boxes of information. The box on the left should be labeled Tools, the middle one should be labeled My Announcements, and the one on the right should be labeled My Courses. Click on the name of our course in the My Courses box.
If you go to Blackboard before Sunday, June 17th, you may be able to log in to Blackboard and see the names of all of your courses, but you won’t be able to access our particular online course. It will not yet be activated, and you will see the word “unavailable” after the name of the course. After you have successfully clicked on the name of our course, you will eventually see purple rectangles on the left side of the page (they have titles such as FAQs, Quizzes, etc., and it may take a while for them to appear). You will also see one or more announcements (messages) from me on the right side. Read the announcements carefully for further instructions and information about the class.
In addition to the major tests that you will take on campus, there will be quizzes that you will take online. You will also have some writing assignments, which will consist of Discussion Board assignments and a paper assignment. I will explain how to take online quizzes and how to post to the Discussion Board at the orientation on campus.
It is absolutely essential that you have extremely reliable Internet access (preferably with broadband or DSL access) if you are taking an online class. If you don’t have access to a computer with reliable Internet access at home, or if your Internet access at home is temporarily unavailable at some point during the semester, there are computers available on campus for your use; however, please note that the campus will be open for very limited hours during the summer so it's best not to rely on campus computers. (Local libraries also usually have computers available to use; however, please note that it may not be possible to watch the assigned videos on a local library’s computer.) Please note that it is your responsibility to have access to a reliable computer with reliable Internet access at all times during the semester.
This course, like almost every 3-unit college course throughout the country, requires 144 hours of work for the typical student. This means that in a condensed 6-week summer semester, you will need to spend approximately 24 hours per week on this one course. If you don’t have this much time available this semester, you should drop the course and take it when you do have the time available.
There are three required textbooks for this course. The main textbook, titled Society: The Basics (11th ed.), is by John J. Macionis. It is published by Pearson Education, Inc. (Prentice-Hall), and the copyright is 2011. (There is a newer edition of this textbook coming out this summer; we are not using the newer edition.) The second textbook, titled Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, is by Sudhir Venkatesh. It is published by Penguin, and the copyright is 2008. The third textbook, a book of readings titled Society: Readings To Accompany “Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach" (2nd ed.), is edited by James Henslin. It is published by Allyn & Bacon and the copyright is 2009. You do need the correct editions of the Macionis and Henslin textbooks; check the copyrights and edition numbers very carefully. Please note that you do not need any supplement such as a CD or study guide that might be sold along with the textbooks. All three of these books are available in our campus bookstore. (Photos of the book covers are available online through the campus bookstore site; if you are going to buy the books somewhere other the campus bookstore, make sure you look at the photos of the book covers at the campus bookstore site to make sure you have the correct books. In past semesters, several students have bought the wrong version of the Henslin book from online sources.)
You should buy your books as soon as possible. If you go to the bookstore and they tell you a textbook is sold out, you should immediately tell them to order you a copy as it can take some time to get additional copies sent to the bookstore. The danger of waiting too long to get the textbooks is that you may end up facing the first test or quiz without having the reading material you will need. It is always your responsibility to have the required textbooks. Unfortunately, I do not have any extra copies of the textbooks to lend to students.
If you have never taken an online class before, I strongly suggest you take a look at the following information (titled “Are you ready to be an online student?”) to help you figure out if you would do well in an online course: http://www.palomar.edu/areyouready.
If you need to contact me before the beginning of the semester about anything that is not covered above, please contact me via e-mail on or after Friday, June 15th. However, please note that I do not make course materials such as the syllabus, schedule, etc., available to students before Sunday, June 17th.
I hope you have a great semester!
Professor Kalyna Lesyna