There are four primary ways to accumulate hours for this course: attendence to set open lab times, working for an organization that assists adolescent girls (must be approved), completion of required assignments, and completion of additional optional assignments. The computer lab will be open for approximately 20 hours each week. During open lab times, there will always be a lab instructor present to help guide you. You can stop by at any of the open lab times to complete your hours.
Logging hours while in lab: Hours worked in lab must be logged in the binder in lab. The lab instructors will always have the log book with them when they are in lab. It is important that you are very specific about what you completed while in lab, as that will help us determine the quality of your work while in lab. If you are working on your final project during lab, those hours will not count towards lab hours. However, you are more than welcome to come into lab for help on your final project.
Submitting Assignments: Assignments will appear in the assignment section of CTools.
You can submit your assignment by either typing it in Microsoft Word
and attaching it in CTools or you can type directly into
the textbox provided by CTools. Some students prefer Word because they can spellcheck
their document before submitting it. If you need to turn in a file that is larger than Ctools will accept, you can email those pieces of your assignment to Tiffany, Monica, and Becca. Just make sure to specify you have done so in the write-up you submit in CTools for the assignment.
All required assignments should be completed prior to class each week. The first required assignment is due the fourth week of classes. Required assignments will not be accepted late and will be used to determine a portion of your class participation grade as well as count towards lab hours (the number of hours each assignment is worth is noted in CTools and in the "Topic, Readings, and Assignments by Week" section of the syllabus).
Optional assignments can be completed at any point in the semester. However, if you intend to maintain a LiveJournal or want to be a Girl Scout mentor, you should let us know in the first few weeks of class. Each optional assignment has a maximum number of hours assigned to it. When you submit your assignment, you should tell us the actual amount of time you spent on the task. Obviously, the more time you spend on a task, the greater the expectation for quality of work.
Hours due for the semester: At the end of the semester, we will add your total number of hours accumulated. We do not count hours on a weekly basis, so if you miss a few hours one week, you can make them up the following week. The total number of hours expected for Winter 2007 is 60 hours. This total includes discounted hours for the first week of classes and Winter Break.
The purpose of the mid-term paper is to synthesize the readings, your experiences on SmartGirl.org, and your research ideas. First, you will form educated hypotheses about adolescent girls based on literature required for the course and from other scholarly literature. Then, you will create questions to help test your hypotheses. Your questions will be posted on SmartGirl.org for one week to gather responses from adolescents. You will analyze the data collected and write a research report (introduction, lit review, methods, results, conclusion, references cited). The result of your mid-term paper should be several ideas to help guide your final project. Your paper should be 5-7 double spaced pages, 12 pt times new roman, 1" margins, and use APA citations. Students are expected to follow the UM honor code when completing their mid-term papers. Plagiarism will result in failure in the course.
Your final project for this course is to use course readings, your mid-term paper, discussions, and your experiences working with girls on the site to create an online intervention for adolescent girls. Throughout the semester, you will learn the web design process which will also inform your final project. The rubric that will be used to grade final projects is included in the Resources section of CTools (named: Final Project Rubric). When you turn in your final project, you should include:
GUIDELINES FOR FINAL PRESENTATIONS
Although final projects are not due until finals week, each student will present the current state of their final project to their peers during the last week of class. The presentation should be about 5 minutes long and should be created using PowerPoint (you will learn PowerPoint in this course). The final presentation should incorporate a combination of the following elements: