RONALD G. BROWN, TELEWEB COURSE ADMINISTRATOR
NEWSLETTER TWO
SPRING 2009
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RONALD G. BROWN, TELEWEB COURSE ADMINISTRATOR NEWSLETTER TWO SPRING 2009 |
As for the grading procedure,
generally the examinations will be collected from the La Plata Testing
Center when the exam packets arrive from the Leonardtown and Prince Frederick
campuses. That will be about two or so days after the end of the testing
period. When all of the SCANTRON forms have been scanned at one time,
the rest of the exams will be graded, the grades will be recorded in "Grade
Book," and the exams will be returned to you through
the mail. At least a week will be needed to grade the exams from the time
of pick up to mailing.
By now you should have submitted the information indicating your book review reference(s) (Due February 23- 28). If you have not yet submitted your reference information, please do so.
The following activities
remain for you:
March
9-14---post your brief book review in "Discussions"
March 16-22--- Spring Break (Have a nice time!);
March
23-April 2---take Examination Two and submit the optional
extra
credit assignment associated with the unit;
March 30-April 4--- post your brief book review response in "Discussions"
April 3---last day to withdraw or change a credit to an audit;
April 6-11---submit your book review;
April
25---last day to submit optional extra credit assignment two
and/or
three; and
April 27-May 4---take Examination Three/Final Examination.
For those of you who did well on the first examination, keep up the good effort. If you did not do well or were disappointed with your results, then you may need to adjust your study habits. Perhaps you may have underestimated the amount of time needed to prepare for the examination or you may have ignored using the study guide to help you manage the extensive course material or you may have neglected to compose answers and study those answers for the potential essay questions given in the newsletter. Call me if you wish to talk about your grade.
By now you should be nearly finished reading the book you selected for review purposes and you should have selected your reference sources.
For the book review assignment, ideally, you should write a couple of drafts of your book review before you submit it for a grade. Be careful to avoid making your review a mere summary, for a review is more complex than that. Devote two pages or less to the summary portion of your review. Be sure you respond to all questions asked and all tasks stated in the book review information section of the syllabus.
One of the most important tasks in the book review, the successful completion of which is important to earning a high grade, is the use of another source or sources to show agreement and/or disagreement with the book you are reviewing. Be sure you state the agreement and/or disagreement rather than simply using the reference(s) to provide additional information as you would in writing a term paper. To complete this part of the assignment, state your author's point of view in a quotation on an issue that could involve an event, person, or trend; and then state the other author's opinion in a quotation on the same event, person, or trend. For each source provide at least three substantive examples of agreements and/or disagreements in your book review. Events or persons you have used for agreement/disagreement should differ from the events or persons you have selected to comment upon in responding to the second task described in the book review assignment information.
Follow the current MLA documentation style when documenting your sources. According to the MLA documentation style, after the quoted or paraphrased statement, make a set of parentheses, and place within those parentheses the last name of the author and the page number(s) on which the reference can be found. For example, "The growth of factories resulted from a series of related innovations in production, transportation, and distribution" (Barney 300). If you state the author's name and title of the book in the text of your review, then place only the page number(s) within the parentheses. For example, according to William Barney in The Passage of the Republic, "The growth of factories resulted from a series of related innovations in production, transportation, and distribution" (300). Formal documentation requires you to include a Works Cited page as the last page of your book review. This page is a bibliography consisting of the sources you actually cited in your book review. For further information about the MLA documentation and bibliographic styles, consult A Guide to Research and Documentation Style on reserve at the circulation desk in the LRC at the La Plata, Leonardtown, or the Prince Frederick campuses.
Below are some examples of bibliographic entries.
A book by one author
Lee, Jean B. The
Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in Charles County.
New York: W.W. Norton and Co. 1994.
An article from a weekly
periodical
Parshall, Gerald.
"A Monumental Man: FDR's Chiseled Features Defined an American
Epoch." U. S. News & World Report. 28 April 1997: 59-64.
An Internet source
Burns, Ken and Stephen
Ives. "People in the West": New Perspectives on the West.
15 September 1997.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs000/w010_110.htm.
At whatever stage you are in completing your book review, please reread the book review assignment information to be sure you are responding to all the demands of the assignment.
Your second examination is the week of March 23-April 2, 2009.
The Testing Center
hours at La Plata are as follows:
Monday to Thursday----
10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.,
Friday------------------ 9:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., and
Saturday----------------
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
The Testing Center
hours at Leonardtown are as follows:
Monday to Thursday---10:00
a.m. to 8:00 p.m.,
Friday-----------------
9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Saturday-------------- 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
The Testing Center
hours at Prince Frederick are as follows:
Monday
to Thursday---10:00 a.m. to
7:00 p.m.
Friday ----------------
9:00
a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Saturday ------------- 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Since completing the examination will probably take about ninety minutes, please allow yourself enough time to complete the examination before the testing center closes.
Bluebooks are required for the essay and identification sections of the examination. If you are going to take the exam on a Saturday at the La Plata campus, you will need to purchase to bluebook earlier in the week, as the Bookstore is not open on Saturdays.
Material for the second examination is drawn from lessons 35-42, episodes 35-42, and textbook pages 602-753/Chapters 23-28.
The objective section (46 points) consists of multiple choice, true or false and map identification items organized as follows: 41 questions based on the episodes, the textbook, and questions from lessons 35-42 in the Study Guide; and five map identification questions (from pages 727 and 729 in the textbook). Answer the objective questions on the SCANTRON form.
For the essay section
of the examination, the following four questions, taken from the essay
questions found in each lesson of the Study Guide, will appear on the exam. You
will be required to respond to one of the four essay question (forty
points).
Describe the following aspects of the 1920s:
reasons behind the expansion of the economy, the
contributions of technology to
economic growth, experiences of women, minorities and labor in
the economy, and the rise of the consumer culture
and its influences on American society.
Contrast the administrations
of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt in the
following areas: their
attitudes toward the economy and how to react to the Depression, and
their responses to the Depression
(Provide TWO examples of actions or legislation for President
Hoover and THREE examples of actions
or legislation for President Roosevelt.). Describe TWO
ways in which the New Deal altered
the role of the federal government.
In the 1920s and 1930s, did the
U.S. rigidly adhere to a policy of isolationism in international
affairs? Explain. Describe
the following aspects of U.S. international relations in the 1930s
and the early 1940s: the U.S. response to rising international violence with the Neutrality Acts,
the breakdown in Japanese-American relations as seen in Japanese expansionistic attitudes,
events that intensified the crisis between the two nations, and the reasons why Japan attacked
Pearl Harbor.
Describe the influences of World
War II on the following aspects of American life: the influences
of the war on employment and industrial
production, how labor fared during the war, technological
advances and improvements resulting
from the war, the response of African Americans, Native
Americans and women to the needs
of war and the wartime economy, and TWO cultural
developments stimulated by the war.
Respond to the essay question and the identification items in an examination book/bluebook.
Testing centers supply only the examination and the SCANTRON form. You are responsible for bringing identification, pen, pencil, and the bluebook or in an emergency notebook paper on which to complete the essay and identification sections of the examination.
Though the semester is nearly half over, you still have much to do. Work hard, which I know you are already doing, and study thoroughly, so you can conclude the semester successfully.
If you have any questions about the remaining course work, please e-mail me or call me at 301-934-7818 or 301-870-3008, extension 7818. I will try to respond to your e-mail or return your call when possible.
Have a nice spring break, when it finally arrives!
ADDENDUM:
Below is a copy of the checklist that will be used to evaluate/grade the book review assignment. The checklist is a basic outline of the demands of the book review assignment. In parentheses is a number that represents the numerical value of that particular item in the review. If you respond well to the item, you will earn up to the point value expressed in the parentheses. For example, if the first page follows the format directions given in the book review section of the syllabus, you will earn three points which will be indicated in the blank with a check mark. On the other hand, if the placement of information is wrong or the information is incomplete, you may lose one or two points which will be expressed with a minus two or minus one in the blank next to the item.
Six complete pages of text means that page six needs to be filled from top to bottom. One sentence at the top of page six is not a complete page, and if that happens points will be lost. For each page under six complete pages of text, as much as minus four points can be lost for each page. The Works Cited page is not part of the six pages of text. So if the book review has only four pages of text, that could be minus six points.
Points will be lost for writing errors and incorrect or no documentation, but you cannot lose more points than the values in parentheses. For example, if there are numerous writing, grammatical, punctuation and spelling errors, you could lose up to minus six points or less points. If those kind of errors were at a minimum, then a check mark would be placed in the blank.
If there is less than the required three agreements/disagreements (each being worth seven points) supported by quotations from the book being review and the reference, you will lose points. Remember the agreements/disagreements need to be substantial. Small statistical differences or slight differences in dates of events would not be considered substantial agreements/disagreements. If there are no agreements/disagreements in the review, that will result in a loss of twenty-one points.
If you use an extra credit reference for making more agreements/disagreements, you may earn up to four points for each additional and substantial agreement/disagreement. To earn the full twelve points, three substantial agreements/disagreements with the extra credit reference would be required. As a general example, in the review you might state that Dr. Smith (The author of the book being reviewed.) and Dr. Jones (The author of the reference.) agree with each other on the origins of the war, and you would provide the two quotations that show that agreement. Then you could add that Dr. Noitall (The author of the extra credit reference.) disagrees with those two on the war's origins, and states this disagreement (a quotation).
If there is no Works Cited page, that will result in a loss of six points. If there is a Works Cited page with some errors, up to three points could be lost. Use of MLA refers to proper usage of the Modern Language Association documentation standards to write correct bibliographic entries for the Works Cited page.
I hope the above explanations and the checklist given below will help you with the completion of the book review assignment. It is not an easy assignment, but it is one that has you reading a book, writing a review that is more than just a summary of the book, and considering how one historian's view may differ or agree with another, for not all historians agree with one another about what has happened in history. In effect, you will be participating in activities that professional historians do.
HST 1032-THE UNITED
STATES FROM 1877 TELEWEB COURSE
Book Review Checklist
The number in
parentheses indicates the total value for that item. How well you
respond to the item will determine whether you receive the full value or
something less. No response to the item will result in a zero.
The book review is worth 120 points.
Format of first page _____ (3) Primary documents
used ___ (4)
Length (6 complete
Main sources used ___ (4)
pages of text)
_____ (8)
Summary
_____ (3) Documentation
___ (6)
Organization _____ (3) Writing of the
review ___ (6)
Writing
style _____ (3) Use of quotations
___ (6)
Fairness _____ (3) Reference
___ (21)
Use of
aids _____ (3)
Extra credit
reference ____(+12)
Persons and Events _____ (4) Use
of MLA ____ (3)
Understanding _____ (3) Works Cited page ____ (6)
Relevance _____ (3) ___________________________
Your opinion _____ (3) 120 points---
Reason(s) for
selecting this book _____ (3)
Author's biography _____ (3)
Author's publications _____ (3)
Author's purpose _____ (3)
Author's thesis _____ (4)
Is the book
controversial _____ (4)