Hello Students,

I apologize, in advance, for this long communication.  It is, however, the midway point in the term and there is much to discuss.

MIDTERM EXAMS ARE OVER

Throughout my teaching career, I have always adjusted exam grades, although I do not grade on a curve. The adjustments are always upward, and never penalize students. If I throw a bad question out, and you had gotten it right, you still get the point. For all students, I remove one of the points possible, which helps everyone.

I've taken a look at Midterm Exam scores, run an item analysis to look for mistakes and bad questions, and considered test difficulty rating and class average. After careful consideration, I have made the upward adjustment to your midterm exam scores. This hefty increase amounts to a full letter grade. These grades are now reflected in your Moodle gradebook. Contact me via Moodle messaging if you have any questions about this or any of your grades.

Your final exam is not cumulative and will focus on material from week 6 forward. Of course, you will still have to know the basics from the first half of class, such as who Ho Chi Minh and LBJ are, where Hanoi and Saigon are located, the nationalism/communism/democracy differences, etc.

LONG OVERDUE SCORES HAVE BEEN POSTED

I experienced some technical issues that lost all of my individual comments that I had composed to each of you as feedback on the past two assignments.  That is the main reason that I've taken so long in "returning" them to you.  Regardless, you can now see at least the points you earned for the past two forum and journal assignments.  

FORUM POSTS - GENERAL FEEDBACK

I was impressed by the depth of discussions, the citing of sources in the textbooks and videos, and mostly in the constructive ways you agreed and disagreed with one another. I look forward to your posts and replies in your next forum assignment.

Overall, I have two suggestions for all students when posting, besides the obvious spelling and grammar checking and proofreading for readability. (This is accomplished by composing your work in a word processor FIRST. Then copy and paste it into Moodle.)

First, in your last forum, you were divided into groups.  After the deadline, I made all groups visible to all students.  If you read those other discussions, as you were instructed to do, you should have noticed that all forum discussions were not of the same quality.  Those students who cited facts and data from the videos and/or textbooks, supported their claims well.  How else do you prove that you know what you are talking about?  Posting early and often also helped add to the quality of the discussion a great deal.

Second, keep in mind that these posts (and journal entries) constitute a week’s worth of effort.  Your initial posts are worth 15 points, and replies can earn up to 5 points each.  Even if you don't earn the full credit for the best post ever, continuing to discuss the issues intelligently in a series of replies with your classmates can get you "up" to the maximum points for the forum.

JOURNAL ENTRIES

Although there is no rule on journal length requirements, a single double spaced page should be considered a minimum for a week's worth of work.  A single page is just under 400 words in length.  Check to see how long your last journal assignment was.  I think most students will be hard pressed to provide a thorough answer to my questions and reflect on the Patriots book stories adequately enough in less space.

WEEK 6 AND BEYOND

You will also notice that this week, you do not have an assignment to turn in. I have allowed this week for all students to catch up and perhaps even get ahead in your reading and viewing assignments. With this short break, I hope you will be energized for the remaining 5 weeks of the term.

I have just made the new Journal Assignment for Week 7 viewable to everyone.

Oh yes, the remaining journals and forums are worth an additional 5 point each in the second half of this class.  (Journals are worth 30 points instead of 25, and forums are worth 25 instead of 20... just like it says on the Syllabus )

That's all for now,

Joe