Welcome to Geography 100! This guide is intended to help you get the most out of your experience in the course. It explains course organization and procedures, which have evolved over time, to help things run smoothly. It is your responsibility to read, understand, and follow these important policies.

Let's start with the catalog description of Geography 100:

Please confer with the instructor the first day of class if you need special arrangements because of any physical limitations (such as limited mobility, hearing, or vision).

Instructor:  Professor Thomas Detwyler, office D-331 Science, phone 346-4450, e-mail address tdetwyle (from on-campus) or tdetwyle@uwsp.edu (from off-campus). You are urged to raise questions or comments in class, before or after class, or via e-mail. Office hours this semester are: Tuesday and Thursday, 9:00-9:50 a.m.; Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. to noon; and by appointment. These hours, and necessary revisions, are posted outside the instructor's office.

Our obligations to each other: Nobody has forced me to become a geography professor; likewise, nobody has forced you to study geography this semester. These facts form the basis of our obligations to each other in the classroom situation. I consider it my obligation to listen carefully to your questions and answer them as well as possible given the need to finish the lecture. I also feel obligated to present material in an interesting and understandable way: if you don't understand what I am saying speak up! I will try again. Finally, I am obligated to be specific about course assignments (see Course Schedule), and to be both fair and explicit about evaluation and grading (see G, below).

The other side of the story is your obligation to me and to the other students in the class. An important obligation is not to disrupt the class by your behavior; try to get there on time, and make a quiet entrance if you are late. Getting up and leaving in the middle of a lecture is also disruptive. Don't distract other students by talking during the lecture or films. You are also obligated to attend lectures regularly; showing up and listening is a basic form of respect for the content of the education you are paying for!  You are expected to read and study all assigned material before coming to the class for which it has been assigned. Even though the class is large, you should be prepared both to ask and to answer questions in class. (By contributing to class discussion you may earn a few extra points toward your course grade.) At our second class meeting you should select a seat in Science D-102 to occupy during the semester, and print your name on the seating chart. If you miss a class session, you are responsible for getting notes from fellow students or the course electronic sites (not from the instructor).

Geography 100 will survey fourteen environmental issues this semester. To help you learn about these problems, there is a set of online questions about each issue, on the first Web page for that topic. You should record these questions and carefully answer them in writing.  Several methods for doing this will be discussed during the second class meeting.

A thorough understanding of these questions and answers will help you to contribute effectively to class discussions and to perform well on tests. Therefore it is important that you complete these study units as best you can by their assigned dates (see the Course Schedule); some answers may be given Tuesday in class-- for instance, through videos shown then.  

You may earn one or several extra points for participation in class discussions. This is the only way to earn extra credit in the course

You should carefully assemble a Course Portfolio, which will represent one-quarter of your course grade (50 points). Your portfolio should be a sequential collection of your coursework, divided into sections representing major course subjects, beginning with Model of Environmental Stress. 

Each topical section in your portfolio should contain:

1. study questions (if provided) and complete answers; 

2. a record of your personal thoughts and analyses of assigned material on that topic (may include brief excerpts or quotations from course materials); and

3. your personal thoughts and analysis of at least one unassigned (may be an optional) article on each enviro issue; provide the full reference (title, author, date, publication or Internet site URL).

In a section at the end of your portfolio write your "concluding thoughts about the physical environment under stress."

All of your writing should be thoughtful, clearly expressed, gramatically correct, and absent misspellings. Your comments should indicate that you have engaged yourself with the course material. You may want to critique presented ideas or reflect on your own experience relative to these ideas, or to comment on what you view as significant omissions. Do not include copies of entire articles. Do not include raw lecture notes. 

Entries in your portfolio may be legibly handwritten. Insert your portfolio pages in a 3-fastener folder that has soft, non-plastic covers. Near the top of the front cover write your name, course and section numbers, and date.

Hand in your portfolio at the beginning of class on Thur., May 3. The instructor will evaluate your portfolio and return it to you in class on Tuesday, May 8.

An excellent performance in this course requires thorough understanding of all assigned material. For most students this will probably require an average of about five to six hours of outside work each week (beyond the two hours of class meetings). 

Specifically, you should know the basic meaning of concepts and terms. Most questions on tests come from assigned reading and lecture. To do well, make sure that you can generally answer the bold-type questions that introduce paragraphs in the Miller textbook. Also, make sure that you can answer all online study questions which accompany each environmental issue. If you can't find some answers, ask about them in class.

Thirteen weekly tests, each worth 10 points, will be given on Thursdays.  The instructor will automatically drop each student's two lowest test scores (out of the thirteen) in calculating course grades; thus, these tests are worth a total of 110 points.  This procedure allows students to miss one or two tests without penalty.  Given this latitude, no make-up tests are given.  

For every test a student must know and correctly enter their student identification number (not social security number) on the test answer sheet; failure to do so may result in a zero score.  For every test you should bring and use a number 2 pencil. 

Within a few days after each test, individual scores will be posted online-- announced and linked on the Course Update page.  You will have to enter your student log-in name and password to see test results.  Scores are listed by Student ID numbers (as they were entered by students on the first test answer form).

A comprehensive final exam is worth 40 points (one-fifth of your course grade).