Special fall 2020 pandemic syllabus content
Because of the ongoing COVID pandemic, It is quite likely that major elements of this syllabus will be changed dramatically and on short notice. These first few paragraphs, in italics, contain information particular to the peculiar circumstances of the fall 2020 semester. After these italicized sections, you’ll find all the usual syllabus fine print about course objectives, policies, procedures, etc.
First, some University-mandated syllabus verbiage, complements of the Provost’s office:
Campus Health, Wellness, and Safety
* Reminder on 10 Guiding Principles for Health, Safety, and Wellness at Texas State, including requirement to wear a cloth face covering and perform a self-assessment each day before coming to campus.
* Importance of the Bobcat Pledge, including the shared responsibility to practice healthy behaviors and follow the health and safety guidelines, which shows respect for others and helps prevent the spread of COVID-19 on campus and in the surrounding community.
* Link to the Student Roadmap for more information on students’ return to campus.
* Link to the Bobcat Trace site, the reporting tool for notification of positive COVID-19 tests/illnesses to the university.
Statement on Civility and Compliance in the Classroom
Civility in the classroom is very important for the educational process and it is everyone’s responsibility. If you have questions about appropriate behavior in a particular class, please address them with your instructor first. Disciplinary procedures may be implemented for refusing to follow an instructor’s directive, refusing to leave the classroom, not following the university’s requirement to wear a cloth face covering, not complying with social distancing or sneeze and cough etiquette, and refusing to implement other health and safety measures as required by the university. Additionally, the instructor, in consultation with the department chair/school director, may refer the student to the Office of the Dean of Students for further disciplinary review. Such reviews may result in consequences ranging from warnings to sanctions from the university. For more information regarding conduct in the classroom, please review the following policies at AA/PPS 02.03.02, Section 03: Courteous and Civil Learning Environment, and Code of Student Conduct, number II, Responsibilities of Students, Section 02.02: Conduct Prohibited.
Emergency Management
In the event of an emergency, students, faculty, and staff should monitor the Safety and Emergency Communications web page. This page will be updated with the latest information available to the university, in addition to providing links to information concerning safety resources and emergency procedures. Faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to sign up for the TXState Alert system
Sexual Misconduct Reporting (SB 212)
Effective January 2, 2020, state law (SB 212) requires all university employees, acting in the course and scope of employment, who witness or receive information concerning an incident of sexual misconduct involving an enrolled student or employee to report all relevant information known about the incident to the university’s Title IX Coordinator or Deputy Title IX coordinator. According to SB 212, employees who knowingly fail to report or knowingly file a false report shall be terminated in accordance with university policy and The Texas State University System Rules and Regulations
Next, some further pandemic times information from your instructor.
Zoom
Some portion of our Fall 2020 class meetings and all office hours will be conducted via Zoom.
Zoom is a free, university-supported program. If you haven’t done so already, download the Zoom client to your desktop or phone right away!
For tips on using Zoom, see https://doit.txstate.edu/services/online-meetings.
Canvas
The classroom management software we’ll be using is Canvas. Perhaps most of you have seen Canvas used in other courses by now, but maybe not. It’s more or less like Texas State’s old TRACS. Canvas works best with the Chrome or Firefox browsers; I strongly recommend you use one of those when you’re accessing Canvas.
It is your responsibility to set the notifications within Canvas so that you receive all notices from me and about this course. If you miss something because “Canvas didn’t tell you,” that’s on you.
Weekly assignments will be handed out and turned back in via Canvas.
A/B Class Format
For fall 2020, the maximum number of students we can have in class is equal to half of normal room capacity. For our class, students will be assigned to one of two groups, A or B. Group A students can attend in person on Tuesdays but cannot attend on Thursdays. Group B students can attend in person on Thursdays but cannot attend on Tuesdays. All students can always attend via Zoom in real time on days when they are not in the class room. For the purposes of COVID tracking, all students will be required to sit in the seat assigned to them.
Our Project in Brief
This class is a formal introduction to computer-assisted analysis of large data sets using SPSS. Building on what they learned in the prerequisite social statistics course, students will learn how to let the machines do the number crunching for them. Meanwhile, students will give their attention to asking the right questions of the machines in the first place, and to properly interpreting the output. Students who master the material in this class will know how to create and edit data sets and variables, how to select appropriate analyses for the data they’ve got, and how to describe fairly and honestly what the data may indicate.
Required Reading
There is no required text for this course. You can find a handy, free online guide to SPSS here: IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25: A Basic Tutorial.
It would be a fine idea to have a social stats textbook at the ready. Here are two good options:
Caldwell, Sally. 2012. Statistics Unplugged, Fourth Edition. Wadworth. ISBN 978-0840029430.
Levin, Jack, James Alan Fox, and David R. Forde. 2014. Elementary Statistics in Social Research, Twelfth Edition. Boston: Pearson. ISBN 978-0205845484.
Email, not Voicemail
I am happy to meet with you in open office hours, or at another time if my office hours don’t work for you. I also check email regularly. Do not leave voice mail for me on my office phone. I do not check voice mail.
Grading
Thirteen weekly assignments at 20 points each: 260 points.
End of semester review of student’s class notes: 40 points.
So, total points for the semester: 300 points.
Course grading follows the conventional brackets: 90’s are A’s, 80’s are B’s, etc. So to get an A, for instance, you need at least 90 percent of 300 points, or 270.
The weekly topic and assignments will be presented via prerecorded videos that students can access at their convenience early in the week. Then students can come to class Tuesdays or Thursdays, depending on group assignment, to use the computer lab and work on assignments. So we’ve got a “flipped classroom” format: lecture first, given outside of class, then class meeting second, with the class time used for discussion, question and answer, lab work, etc.
Students may work together and help each other on these weekly assignments, but each student must turn in his or her own work with only his or her own name on it for grading purposes. It goes without saying that such collaboration doesn’t mean a student could just turn in a copy of someone else’s work. I expect to see each student’s own language in the written analyses.
At the end of the semester, students will submit a copy of all the notes they have taken all semester long. The point here is for me to encourage you to take lots of notes! I am concerned that because of the unusual structure of class this fall 2020 semester, students could get into the habit of rather mechanically completing weekly assignments without thinking about them too much. But I very much want you to know the principles of data analysis that are guiding us this semester! By obliging you to take extensive, careful notes all semester, I hope I can encourage you to think, reason, and reflect!
Extra Credit
There is no extra credit. There are 250 points of regular credit, pretty easily collectible by a committed student – earn those. Do not ask for extra credit.
Attendance, Late Assignments, and Make Ups
Fall 20290: Attendance will be recorded carefully all semester, for purposes on COVID safety and, if necessary, contact tracing. If you cannot attend on your Group A/B day, you can attend virtually via Zoom. Neither physical nor virtual attendance will be a graded component of class in fall 2020.
Weekly assignments will be due each week at 3:00 p.m. Saturdays. Assignments turned in after 3:00 will lose 10 of the 20 points. Assignments turned in after 3:00 the following day will lose the remaining 10 points. Those deductions are made automatically when assignments are turned in via Canvas. Bizarrely, MANY students like to wait until nanoseconds before the deadline to turn in assignments, and then get all surprised and hurt when they encounter a technical difficulty that causes their papers to be counted late. Note that Canvas considers 3:00.00001 to be AFTER the deadline of 3:00 and will act accordingly. We will follow a similar procedure for the class notes assignment late in the semester; late papers will lost half credit after the due date and time, then the remaining points 24 hours later.
Any request to make up a missed assignment must be accompanied by a relevant doctor’s note or family funeral notice and must be submitted within one week of returning to class.
Students with Disabilities
Per the Office of Disability Services: “If you are a student with a disability who will require an accommodation(s) to participate in this course, please contact me as soon as possible. You will be asked to provide documentation from the Office of Disability Services. Failure to contact me in a timely manner may delay your accommodations.”
Electronic Devices
Departmental statement: “The Department of Sociology reserves the right to limit or deny the use of any and all electronic devices in the classroom.” You may be dismissed from class for messing with your phone during class time. Leaving the room to use your phone counts as messing with your phone. Students using laptops in class must sit in the front half of the occupied rows. Do not secretly video the lectures and post them on YouTube. I will impose add rules as necessary.
Fall 2020: Zoom meetings, any recordings I post, and all such like audio and/or video materials are for our class, not for sharing on the world wide web or with others outside of our class. My lectures and lessons and notes are my intellectual property. Do not distribute my property to other people. I may record some or all class Zoom meetings, in which case you would be recorded if you’re in class or Zooming in from elsewhere.
Texas State University Academic Integrity Policy
Academic dishonesty of any kind will result in the student receiving an F grade for the course.
(Here follows my edited version of language generated by committee for use in the Dept. of Sociology.) As members of the university community, students are expected to be aware of and abide by university policies regarding academic honesty. By the same token, members of the faculty within the university community are expected to enforce those policies. Members of the Department of Sociology operate on the assumption that each student has thoroughly reviewed the university policies regarding academic honesty and that the policies will be followed. Accordingly, members of the Department of Sociology will enforce all policies related to academic honesty.
Academic dishonesty includes the following: cheating, plagiarism, collusion and/or abuse of resource materials. Each term or phrase is defined in some detail in the official links below. Examples of plagiarism include, but are not limited to:
- downloading or buying a research paper
- cutting and pasting information from several sources to create a paper
- leaving out quotation marks around quoted material, placing quotation marks around some but not all copied information
- leaving out quotation marks around copied information but adding a citation implying that the information is the student’s summary of the source
- leaving out quotation marks for more than three consecutive words taken directly from a source
- providing a reference/bibliograghy page but leaving out the reference citation in the body of the paper
- faking a citation
- unintentionally using words or ideas or quotes without citing them in the body of the paper and on the reference/bibliograghy page (http://www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm)
Ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism or having plagiarized in the past without having been penalized does not excuse such acts in the Department of Sociology. Any student charged with plagiarism may appeal in writing in accordance with Texas State University policy. University policy statements relevant to academic integrity are available via these links:
Academic Honesty, UPPS No. 07.10.01