Topics:
1. Introductions
2. Course outline and schedule
3. Academics: Grades, GPA, academic standing
4. Academics: European university systems and Bologna
5. Academics: Academic integrity
6. Time management skills
7. Writing effective quiz answers
8. Academic and institutional quality assurance
9. Academic petitions
Required readings / viewings / listenings:
None.
Homework due:
None.
In-class assessment:
None.
Notes:
Department Chair - Business Administration - Václav Chvalovský (acting chair)
Undergraduate Program Coordinator - Zuzana Krahulcová
Grade distribution
Time management links, from Empire State College
Sample quiz answers
Instructions: Briefly (in two to three sentences) define and state the significance of the following terms from the readings and viewings for the class:
Thomas Paine
Answer #1
- his most significant work Common Sence
- he wrote it in the language of citizens so it was easy to read
- main idea is that America has finally find her way to be, exists on her own
- it is essential to govern America by the colonists in order to ensure peace and suverenty and liberty
Answer #2
English & American; Author of the Common Sence (letter against the king George III)
Answer #3
- Writer
- Common Sense
conquistador
Answer #1
Spanish explorer(s) soldier(s).
↓
during the 15th - 19th century
Answer #2
Desoto, Pizzaro
Man who try to find some valuable items (gold, advanced civilization, silver) in explored land violence against native inhabitants
guns and germs
Answer #3
"Conquistador" is the name applied to the Spanish conquerors of the New World - especially Mexico and South America, notable ones being Cortez and Pissaro.
Bering Strait
Answer #1
During the ice age place covered on ice where hunters-gatherers went to "new world". It melted → isolation → native Americans (Alaska)
Answer #2
Bering Strait is a strait that connects East Eurasia and West North America. It was from here that the first human settlers started to explore Americas from Asia thousands of years ago.
UNYP Annual Report for 2008 (in Czech)
Qrossroads pages on Quality assurance and accreditation in Europe
Academic petition example 1
Academic petition example 2
WEEKEND 2 (October 10)
Topics:
1. Creating effective lecture notes
2. Academic essays: Basic structure
3. Discuss Freire, "The banking concept of education"
4. Discuss Rodriguez, "The achievement of desire"
5. Course quiz
Required readings / viewings / listenings:
Freire, "The banking concept of education"
Rodriguez, "The achievement of desire"
Wade & Tavris, "Appendix: Statistical methods"
Shiller, "Technology and invention in finance"
Learning style description for your "learning style" as indicated by the learning style test
Homework due:
Unless otherwise specified, all homework is due by email no later than 9 October.
Homework 1: Strengths/weaknesses as a student (2 points)
Briefly (in 250 to 400 words) describe your strengths and weaknesses as a university student, and your plans to improve the areas where you have weaknesses.
Homework 2: Learning styles exercise (2 points)
Complete the "Index of learning styles questionnaire." Once you've completed and submitted the questionnaire, print out the "Learning styles results" page. Be sure to write your name and the date on the printout. Then learn more about your learning style in "Learning style descriptions."
Homework 3: Campus vocabulary exercise (2 points)
Complete the online exercise "Campus Vocabulary". Once you've scored 100%, email the results (with your name) to your instructor and to your personal email account.
Homework 4: Academic vocabulary exercise (2 points)
Complete the online exercise "Academic vocabulary" anytime after the start of the semester. Once you've scored 100%, email the results (with your name) to your instructor and to your personal email account. Business majors should select "Business" as their academic discpline.
Homework 5: How to recognize plagiarism exercise (2 points)
Complete the How to recognize plagiarism tutorial from Indiana University's School of Education. Take the online test; once you've successfully completed the test, print your confirmation certificate, fill in your name in the form at the bottom of the confirmation certificate, and hand it in in class this week.
Related resources:
Academic integrity pages at Empire State College
Avoiding plagiarism pages at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab
Homework 6: Mark-up exercise (2 points)
After you've read and marked up (e.g., highlighted, underlined, made notes in the margin, or made notes on a separate piece of paper) the reading "Appendix: Statistical methods" by Wade & Tavris, scan your notes as a single electronic file (you can use the scanner in the UNYP Library) and email it to me. Remember to write your name on your notes so I can identify your work.
Related resources:
Academic reading links from Empire State College
Note-taking systems, from Empire State College
Fastfacts - Learning from texts, from University of Guelph
Fastfacts - SQ4R: A classic method for studying texts, from University of Guelph
Homework 7: Lecture notes exercise (2 points)
As you listen to the online lecture by Shiller, write lecture notes (4 pages, maximum). Try to experience the lecture as a lecture - write notes without re-listening to the lecture. Remember to write your name on the notes so I can identify your work. Scan (if necessary) and email your lecture notes to me as a single electronic file.
Related resources:
Cornell note-taking system, from Cornell University
Homework 8: Effective quiz answer exercise (2 points)
This exercise is cancelled, because we did it in class.
Homework 9: Freire response paper (2 points)
Freire's description of what he calls the "banking" type of education is what most readers grab hold of when they first read this chapter because it appears familiar; most of us can think of concrete examples where "Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat." But what Freire contrasts to "banking" education - "problem-posing" education - is more difficult to define (which should also be a hint to us that the "banking" concept of education may be a little more complicated, and less familiar, than we think).
In class, we will try to define what Freire means, and test his ideas. As a way to begin organizing your thoughts on this, write a brief paper (250 to 400 words) outlining what, concretely, a "problem-posing" class in your major would look like. Be sure to connect the examples you give with specific references to what Freire says in his essay.
Homework 10: Rodriguez response paper (2 points)
In class, we will discuss how Freire might make sense of the story Rodriguez tells in "The achievement of desire." To prepare for this, read Making Connections #1 in Ways of Reading (8th ed. p. 256), and write a brief (250 to 400 word) paper in which you outline how Freire would interpret Rodriguez's story.
In-class assessment:
Quiz questions will be drawn from the list below. Answers can be found in the UNYP Student Guide and/or lectures and class discussions.
About UNYP
UNYP was founded in the year ______
UNYP is part of the __________ Group of schools, which includes campuses in:
All study programs at UNYP are taught in which language?
What percentage of teachers at UNYP are native English speakers? Less / More than 50 %
How many different countries are UNYP's teachers from? Less / More than 10
About how many of UNYP's teachers are Czech? None, 1/5, 1/3, 1/2, 3/4, All
About how many of UNYP's teachers are American? None, 1/5, 1/3, 1/2, 3/4, All
How many different countries to UNYP students come from? Less / More than 50
The largest nationality of UNYP students is: American, Czech, Russian, Slovak
The add / drop deadline for weekend courses is:
To add or drop a course during the add/drop period, you must pick up a form from which office?
If you drop a course, you do / do not lose your tuition money.
The withdrawal deadline for weekend courses is:
If you withdraw from a course, you do / do not lose your tuition money.
The chair of your department is:
The Student Affairs Office is on which floor?
The Student Affairs Office can help you with (check all that apply)
The Registrar's Office is on which floor?
The Counseling Center is on which floor?
True/False: Smoking is not allowed in the UNYP building.
True/False: You may not use mobile phones in classrooms.
True/False: You may not consume alcoholic beverages in the UNYP building.
True/False: You must pay for any damage you cause to UNYP's facilities and equipment.
Write out what the following abbreviations stand for:
UNYP
NYC Group
BUS
GPA
L72
SC
Academics, grading
Briefly define "continuous assessment."
The highest/best grade on the grading scale is:
The lowest/worst grade on the grading scale is:
Attendance is / is not required at all course meetings.
What information can you find in a course outline / syllabus (check all that apply)
What level is this course: UNYP 99101 Introduction to University Studies
The UNYP Honor Code specifically mentions which two offenses?
Fill in the blanks in the grade table, below.
"GPA" stands for:
The lowest / worst GPA is:
The highest / best GPA is:
To be in "good academic standing," you must have a cumulative GPA of at least:
Define "pre-requisite course."
True / False: If you do not maintain a GPA of at least 2.00, you may be dismissed from UNYP.
If you would like to review your final exam for a course, you must contact:
A final course grade can only be changed if:
If you disagree with a grade you have received, you should contact:
An academic semester is how many weeks long at UNYP on the daily programs?
When does the withdrawal period usually end?
The exam period is how many weeks on the daily programs?
Where can you find a copy of the Academic Calendar? (Check all that apply)
Where can you find a copy of the semester's schedule of all classes? (Check all that apply)
Reading: "Appendix: Statistical methods"
These questions are drawn from the reading, "Appendix: Statistical methods." In two to three sentences, define and state the significance of the following terms from the reading:
raw data
frequency distribution
grouped frequency distribution
graph
measure of central tendency
mean
median
mode
measure of variability
range
standard deviation
Define the following symbols from the reading: N, X, Σ
Lectures, articles in the Business major
Quiz questions will be drawn from the lecture you listened to and the article you read in the Business major. You will not have a list of possible questions in advance.
Bologna system
ECTS stands for:
The Czech bachelor's programs at UNYP use which credit system?
In ECTS, the workload of a full-time student during a year is how many credits?
1 ECTS equals how many hours of work?
If a 6 ECTS course meets in-class for 45 hours during a semester, how many hours of work outside class (preparation, study, homework, essay writing, etc.) should be expected on average?
What is a diploma supplement? What sort of information does it contain?
EQF stands for:
In the Bologna system, a bachelor's degree is a first / second / third cycle degree.
A Czech bachelor's degree typically requires how many years of full-time study?
To earn a 3-year Czech bachelor's degree at UNYP, you must complete at least how many ECTS credits?
To earn a bachelor's degree at UNYP, your cumulative GPA must be at least:State Exams are conducted in what language?
State Exams are oral / written exams.
True/False: The examiners at State Exams include teachers from other universities as well as UNYP teachers.
At the State Exams, you do / do not defend your Bachelor's Thesis.
How long does the State Exam last?
True/False: Your Bachelor's Thesis will be published on the UNYP website.
In case of emergency
True/False: UNYP conducts fire drills every semester.
True/False: In case of a fire, take the elevator to get to the ground floor.
In case of a fire, the designated gathering point outside the UNYP building is:
The emergency phone number in the Czech Republic is:
Where do you find signs explaining "emergency procedures" in the UNYP building?
The UNYP Library
During most of the year, the UNYP Library is open how many days per week?
The UNYP Library is on which floor?
What items are specifically not allowed in the library?
Where do you get a key to the lockers in the hall outside the Library?
Circulating materials in the Library may generally be borrowed for how many days?
You may renew your borrowed materials (circle all that apply) in person, by phone, by email.
The library's email address is:
To check out books or use reserve materials in the Library, you must have what with you?
Items on reserve (non-circulating items) may only be used where, and for how long?
Where does the Library keep items on reserve (non-circulating items)?
The penalty for late return of circulating items is how much per item per day?
The penalty for late return of items on reserve (non-circulating items) is how much per item per day?
Where can you find a list of local libraries with English-language collections?
Where can you find a list of local booksellers/distributors, in case you want to buy your own books?
Which online library resources are available at UNYP?
If you wish to use UNYP's wifi network, which office should you contact?
Quality assurance
Briefly define and state the significance of "quality assurance."
UNYP uses the following as part of its regular quality assurance processes for academic programs (circle all that apply): Student Course Evaluations, Peer Course Observations, Departmental Meetings each semester, Individual meetings with teachers each year, a statistical report of grading, review of a representative collection of course materials.
True/False: All teachers have a course/section observed by a department chair or mentor each academic year.
True/False: The goal of Student Course Evaluations and Peer Course Observations is to provide teachers with feedback so they can improve the effectiveness of their teaching.
True/False: You can find UNYP's annual reports to the Czech Ministry of Education on the UNYP website and in the UNYP Library.
Student activities
The sports teams UNYP currently supports are:
Student Council officers are elected / appointed.
Who is eligible to vote for Student Council officers?
Who may attend Student Council meetings?
What do you need to bring with you to access to one of the fitness centers that UNYP subsidizes?
Essays due (post-class)
There are two separate essays required for this class. Both are due by email no later than Monday 19 October 2009.
Essay 1 assignment
Using the assigned lectures, readings, and our discussions as your primary evidence, define the work of the university, the role that students and teachers play in it, and the relation of the university to society (the community, government, the professional world of work and careers).
It may help you to think about differences - how is university different from secondary (high school) education; how is being a student different from being an employee; and what defines the work of professionals in academia (i.e., the people teaching your classes). Your essay should be 1,000 - 1,500 words.
This assignment meets or partially meets these learning outcomes:
* apply effective academic skills in a variety of typical academic contexts (lectures, discussion, tests, essays, presentations);
* understand the requirements and characteristics of scholarly work;
* develop coherent, sustained arguments or interpretations in writing, supported by appropriate examples;
* manage self and time to successfully meet course requirements, including preparation (homework and studying), attendance, active participation, and the timely submission of assignments.
Essay 2 assignment
This course has immersed you in the details of UNYP as an academic institution. It has also asked you to consider larger questions: what a university is, and what role it plays in the world and in the lives of individuals. Your work of the previous weeks have asked you to articulate various aspects of this, especially Essay 1 (in which you defined the role of the university). Working with the material you created for these assignments, write an essay in which you describe your long-term personal and professional goals; how a university education can contribute to these goals, and what you can contribute to the university environment of UNYP. Your Essay 2 should be 1,000 - 1,500 words.
This assignment meets or partially meets these learning outcomes:
* apply effective academic skills in a variety of typical academic contexts (lectures, discussion, tests, essays, presentations);
* demonstrate a practical knowledge of institutional resources and policies;
* understand the requirements and characteristics of scholarly work;
* define their personal learning goals;
* develop coherent, sustained arguments or interpretations in writing, supported by appropriate examples;
* manage self and time to successfully meet course requirements, including preparation (homework and studying), attendance, active participation, and the timely submission of assignments.
Paper requirements for both essays
All essays must:
* be word processed;
* use a 12-point font;
* be double-spaced;
* have numbered pages;
* include your name and a title on the first page;
* use APA citation format;
* use correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation;
* use Rich Text Format (.rtf) or Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format.
Grading Criteria
An “A” paper:
This paper is exceptional. It takes some intellectual risks, and carries out its project with an impressive sophistication of thought and style. The main idea or thesis is clearly communicated. While significant and worthy of being developed, it is also limited enough to be manageable. The paper shows an awareness of some complexity in the thesis: it may discuss possible contradictions or qualifications of the thesis and their implications. The paper’s terms and keywords are clearly defined and all sources are critically examined. The structure of the paper is clear, whether it is a “logical” structure or a more “associational” organization. The paper is generally free from grammatical and spelling errors.
A “B” paper:
This paper does more than fulfill the assignment. It carries out its project with a noticeable degree of skill and competence. It has a clearly stated thesis and organization. It touches on the complexity of the thesis and shows careful reading of the sources. All relevant terms are defined. The paragraphs are unified and relate to the thesis. It has not major distracting errors in usage or mechanics (grammar and spelling), and no major lapses in diction or organization.
A “C” paper:
This paper acceptably fulfills the assignment, though in a routine way. There is a thesis, though it may be rather general. The complexity of the thesis may be touched upon but is not really addressed. The paper’s terms and keywords tend to show a similar generality. The paper’s concepts and thesis are clear enough, but their generality is often a way for the writer to avoid engaging the issues in any real depth. The paper may use sources and cite counter-arguments, but does not critically engage them. The paper has a structure that the reader can discern, though it may be interrupted at times by random or unclear paragraphs and sentences. There may be errors in usage or mechanics.
A “D” paper:
This paper does not have a clearly defined and meaningful thesis, or shows a lack of engagement on the part of the writer. The paper may lack a meaningful purpose: that purpose could be so vague that the reader is unsure why the writer is writing the essay, or the purpose could be so specific that the reader is uncertain why he or she is reading the essay. The paper does not have a coherent structure, uses few or inappropriate transitions and lacks coherent paragraph structure. Specific and relevant evidence is often missing to support the paper’s assertions. There are enough mechanical errors to make it difficult for the reader to understand the writer’s point clearly and quickly. Typically, this paper will have problems such as vague diction, ambiguous phrasings, awkward sentences, undefined terms, unexamined sources, or no sources at all.
An “F” paper:
This paper does not respond to the assignment, or has no main idea or thesis and uses no sources. There is no clearly discernable organization or structure to the paper. There is no relevant supporting evidence. The amount of mechanical errors makes it difficult to follow the sequence of ideas. A stylistically adequate paper that does not respond to the assignment is an “F” paper, as is a paper that is not turned in on time.
Grades
Cumulative grades for F09 Introduction to University Studies (Intensive Weekend Format)
Notes:
213: Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher. The more completely he fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is men themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, men cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
214: It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable, manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.
215-16: Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between man and the world: man is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; man is spectator, not re-creator. In this view, man is not a conscious being (corpo consciente); he is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty "mind" passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside. For example, my desk, my books, my coffee cup, all the objects before me - as bits of the world which surrounds me - would be "inside" me, exactly as I am inside my study right now. This view makes no distinction between being accessible to consciousness and entering consciousness. The distinction, however, is essential: the objects which surround me are simply accessible to my consciousness, not located within it. I am aware of them, but they are not inside me.
It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that the educator's role is to regulate the way the world "enters into" the students. His task is to organize a process which already occurs spontaneously, to "fill" the students by making deposits of information which he considers to constitute true knowledge. [2] And since men "receive" the world as passive entities, education should make them more passive still, and adapt them to the world. The educated man is the adapted man, because he is better "fit" for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is well suited to the purposes of the oppressors, whose tranquillity rests on how well men fit the world the oppressors have created, and how little they question it.
[2] This concept corresponds to what Sartre calls the "digestive" or "nutritive" concept of education, in which knowledge is "fed" by the teachers to the students to "fill them out." See Jean-Paul Sartre, "Une idee fundamentale de la phenomenologie de Husserl:; L'intentionalite," Situations I (Paris, 1947).
221: In sum: banking theory and practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men as historical beings; problem-posing theory and practice take man's historicity as their starting point.
Rodriguez, "The Achievement of Desire"
I came home. After the year in England, I spent three summer months living with my mother and father, relieved by how easy it was to be home. It no longer seemed very important to me that we had little to say. I felt easy sitting and eating and walking with them. I watched them, nevertheless, looking for evidence of those elastic, sturdy strands that bind generations in a web of inheritance. I thought as I watched my mother one night: of course a friend had been right when she told me that I gestured and laughed just like my mother. Another time I saw for myself: my father's eyes were much like my own, constantly watchful.
But after the early relief, this return, came suspicion, nagging until I realized that I had not neatly sidestepped the impact of schooling. My desire to do so was precisely the measure of how much I remained an academic. Negatively (for that is how this idea first occurred to me): my need to think so much and so abstractly about my parents and our relationship was in itself an indication of my long education. My father and mother did not pass their days thinking about the cultural meanings of their experience. It was I who described their daily lives with airy ideas. And yet, positively: the ability to consider experience so abstractly allowed me to shape into desire what would otherwise have remained indefinite, meaningless longing in the British Museum. If, because of my schooling, I had grown culturally separated from my parents, my education had finally given me ways of speaking and caring about that fact.
My best teachers in college and graduate school, years before, had tried to prepare me for this conclusion, I think, when they discussed texts of aristocratic pastoral literature. Faithfully, I wrote down all that they had said. I memorized it: "The praise of the unlettered by the highly educated is one of the primary themes of 'elitist' literature." But, "the importance of the praise given the unsolitary, richly passionate and spontaneous life is that it simultaneously reflects the value of a reflective life." I heard it all. But there was no way for any of it to mean very much to me. I was a scholarship boy at the time, busily laddering my way up the rungs of education. To pass an examination, I copied down exactly what my teachers told me. It would require many more years of schooling (an inevitable miseducation) in which I came to trust the silence of reading and the habit of abstracting from immediate experience - moving away from a life of closeness and immediacy I remembered with my parents, growing older - before I turned unafraid to desire the past, and thereby achieved what had eluded me for so long - the end of education.
