Math 031L.13, Fall 1997
Laboratory Calculus I with Environmental Emphasis,
General Information
- Instructor: David
Smith
- Office hours
- Mon 2:15-4:15 and by appointment. To make an appointment, send an e-mail
request or call 660-2823.
- Help Room (Crowell Hall, East Campus), Wed. 4-5.
- Instructor absences
- Your instructor will be out of town on the following dates:
- September 4-7, Research Conference on Collegiate Mathematics Education,
Central Michigan University
- September 12-14 (leaving after class on Friday), National Advisory
Panel, Core-Plus Mathematics Project, Western Michigan University
- October 6-7 (leaving after class on Monday), consulting and lecturing
at U.S. Military Academy
- October 9-12, Technology Transitions Calculus Conference, Dallas
- November 6-9, International Conference on Technology in Collegiate
Mathematics, Chicago
- A substitute will cover classes on September 5, October 10, and November
7. No classes will be cancelled.
- Lab Instructor and Assistant
- Textbook
- Calculus, by D. Hughes-Hallet, et al.
- You do NOT need the department's Course Pack for this section. All
lab materials will be provided on a web page.
- Mailing list
- You can communicate with all members of your section by sending e-mail
to mth031L-13@acpub.duke.edu.
In particular, this is a good way to ask or answer a question or to discuss
a topic of interest to the class. You will also get messages from the instructor
and lab assistant this way.
- Reading Assignments
- Much of what you will learn in this course will not come from lectures.
There is a reading assignment for most class days. You are expected to
study those assignments before the corresponding class day and to
ask questions about anything you don't understand. Expect the reading to
be hard work. You should work with others in the class when you are studying
and working on homework. You can ask questions of classmates, lab instructor,
lab assistant, or instructor -- in person, by phone, or by e-mail.
- Some topics on the Mathematics
Department's 31L syllabus do not fit in the syllabus for this special
section. These topics will not be explicitly taught or tested in this course.
However, the corresponding sections of the text appear in our
syllabus as Supplementary Reading. They are not assigned to
specific class days, but each is listed at the end of a week when it would
be reasonable to start reading that section.
- Writing Assignments
- You will be expected to use what you are learning in the University
Writing Course (and have learned elsewhere) to write clear, direct English
prose about your thought processes and your work on various sorts of problems.
You will find it useful to read A
Guide to Writing in Mathematics Classes by Annalisa Crannell (Franklin
and Marshall College), which you can access on the World Wide Web from
this page, from the course home page, and from the course syllabus page.
- Homework Assignments
- Homework problems will be assigned in a weekly plan posted on the course
web page. Some of those problems will be designated to be turned in on
Mondays for grading. No late homework will be accepted for grading without
a dean's excuse.
- You can't do a good job on a whole week's homework if you start on
Sunday evening. Use the daily assignments as a guide to when you should
start each problem. If, after working the assignment, either you do not
understand the material or you are not proficient at working the problems,
then you should work additional problems on your own. You are encouraged
to work on homework in groups, but your written answers must be in your
own words.
- Laboratory Work
- You have an assigned laboratory period every Thursday from 2:40 to
4:25 in Physics 027 or 032. (These are adjacent computer labs -- specific
teams will be assigned to each room.) You cannot afford to miss lab for
any reason other than illness or an excused absence -- and you must make
up missed labs, on your own time and possibly without a teammate. The lab
work is intimately related with work in class, and 35% of your grade is
based on the lab. Your filled-in computer file will be your submission,
and your lab instructor will tell you how and when to turn it in.
- Projects
- We will have a number of in-class graded projects this semester. Most
of these will be completed in one class period. If necessary, a due date
will be announced at the time of the project.
- Tests
- All tests and quizzes will be open-book (except for the Gateway test
-- see next item). No make-ups will be given without a dean's excuse. There
will be
- occasional short, unannounced quizzes,
- two scheduled take-home tests (October 6 and November 17), and
- a two-part final exam.
- The first part of the final will be an end-of-term essay of fixed length
on a specified topic. The topic will be announced in the first class after
Thanksgiving Break (December 1), and the essay will be due in the last
lab period (December 10).
- The second part of the final will be given in the regularly scheduled
block exam time for Math 31L, but the exam will not be the same as that
taken by other sections.
- Gateway Test
- In addition to the graded tests and final exam, there will be a mastery
or gateway test on differentiation skills. In contrast to all other tests,
this test will be closed-book. This test does not count toward your course
grade, but you cannot get a grade for the course until you have completed
it successfully. The first offering of the gateway test will be in class
on Friday, November 7. After the initial test, equivalent versions will
be offered at out-of-class times until everyone has passed it.
- Electronic journal
- Each student will keep an electronic journal consisting of at least
two paragraphs per week. The object of the journal is to record how things
are going, what you learned during the week (sketchy detail is all right),
what seems to be working well, what's not working, points on which you
may be confused, observations about how your group functions or doesn't
function, and so on. These possible topics need not all be discussed every
week -- just whatever may be important at the time. A journal is an important
tool for personal growth, but it also gives you a way to help the instructor
make mid-course corrections in the way the course is conducted.
- Journal entries will not be graded for content, but they are required
for a small portion of the course grade (see below). The weekly due date
is Friday (starting September 12, omitting only Thanksgiving week and the
last week of classes), but earlier submissions are acceptable -- pick a
convenient time, which may be different each week. Submit your journal
entries to your instructor by e-mail with a subject line including the
word "journal."
- Some journal entries may call for a response or a comment -- these
will be handled by return e-mail. Some may contain significant insights
that should be shared with the class. In that case, all personal identifying
information will be stripped out, and the insight will be posted on the
class bulletin boards.
- Team Work
- Lab work will be done by teams of two students, and projects will be
done by teams of three or four. The instructor will make team assignments
and will change them periodically. When a team's work is turned in, each
member of the team must sign the paper as certification of full participation.
If a member did not participate fully, then that person's name must be
omitted. Separate reports from missing partners generally will not be accepted
except by prior arrangement with the instructor.
- You will find useful information about working in groups in Ten
Guidelines for Students Doing Group Work in Mathematics by Anne
E. Brown, Indiana University South Bend. The first half of this document
is directed to instructors, but the second half -- the list of guidelines
-- is for you.
- Cooperation
- The Undergraduate
Honor Code does not preclude cooperation, except when a particular
task is designated to be done without assistance. Learning is a cooperative
activity -- and the "real world" demands workers who have learned
to cooperate in order to solve more substantial problems than individuals
can solve working alone. Therefore, many tasks in this course will be assigned
to designated groups, and such tasks will receive a group grade.
- Open- vs. closed-book activities
- The "real world" is, among other things, a very large collection
of "open books". Success does not require memorizing the contents
of those "books" but rather understanding how to use available
resources in an intelligent way. Closed-book tests do little to measure
such understanding, so all activities in this course -- including tests
-- will be open-book.
- Language
- The language of communication in this course is English -- written,
spoken, and read. You should expect to be using all three forms of English
communication often.
- Calculator
- For classroom work and homework you will need a graphing calculator
with "sufficient
capabilities," as defined by the Department. No specific make
or model is required.
- Grading
- There is no intellectually respectable justification for pretending
that understanding of mathematics (or any other subject) can be measured
by numerical point scales. University policy requires that overall performance
in a course be assigned a letter grade; as indications of progress along
the way, each graded activity will also be assigned a letter grade relative
to the instructor's expectations for that activity. Such grading is sometimes
called "subjective." The alternative to subjective grading is
not "objective" -- it's arbitrary.
- Semester Grades
- Your letter grades from the different components of the course will
be weighted approximately in the following way. Your instructor will use
the weighted average and his own best judgment to assign the grade you
have earned.
| Team work |
|
|
Individual work |
|
| Lab reports (11) |
35% |
|
Homework, quizzes |
10% |
| Projects (6-8) |
15% |
|
Electronic journal |
5% |
|
|
|
Take-home tests (2) |
15% |
|
|
|
Final Exam |
20% |
| Total |
50% |
|
Total |
50% |
- Assistance
- The Department offers a Help Room for Math 25L and Math 31L in Crowell
Hall on East Campus. It is open 1:00-10:00 pm Monday through Thursday and
6:00-10:00 pm on Sunday. Since our syllabus and labs are different from
the other sections of Math 31L, the helper(s) may not always be able to
answer you questions -- but they should be able to help you work through
to an answer.
- Your lab instructors and your classroom instructor can be called at
any reasonable time, and you can send an e-mail query to any or all of
us at any time.
- Use your instructor's office hours.
- Trinity College provides individual tutoring through the Peer
Tutoring Program, located on the second floor of the Academic Advising
Center (684-8832).
- Don't let confusion go unresolved. Help is available, but you have
to ask, or no one will know you need it. It is a sign of strength
-- not weakness -- to know when you need help and to ask for it.
David A. Smith <das@math.duke.edu>
Last modified: September 11, 1997