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COMM 401

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Examinations

There will be two mid-term exam exams (each 25 percent of your grade) and a final (40 percent of grade).

All exams will contain both objective (short definitions, multiple choice, identification of strategies, and short answer) and essay (interpreting a piece of discourse) questions. The proportion will be about 2/3 objective on the mid-term exams and half on the final. The objective questions will test your mastery of concepts and systems of understanding. The essay questions will test your ability to use those concepts to interpret discourse.

Make-up exams will be a different exam and may have a different format than that described above. Make-ups will only be an option for those notifying me in advance (by phone, voice mail, or email) that you will be unable to make the regularly scheduled exam and providing a documented reason authorized in the University policies on excused absences. Please notice that what must be documented is not that you had a problem, but that your problem was signficant enough to render you unable to take the examination. The University requirement is that you document your inability to take the exam. Documentation should establish that you had a medical condition on the day and time of the test that kept you from taking and satisifactorily performing on the examination. All documentation should contain the name and phone number of someone whom I can contact to discuss your situation.

All examinations are "closed book" and all rules of the Code of Academic Integrity apply, including the use of the University Honor Pledge on each exam.

Read the University Policy on Examinations

Information on how I grade exams


Speech Abstracts.

You should acquire a notebook where you can keep abstracts of the speeches we read in class. I recommend a loose-leaf binder, but you can use a wire-ring binder if you wish. These abstracts have two purposes: (1) to prepare you for class discussion, and (2) to provide practice for the essay portion of the exams. Write them with this in mind.

For each speech you read this semester you should construct an abstract of 100-200 words (less than a page type-written or word processed, double-spaced, although they need not be typed or word processed). The abstract should: (1) identify the speaker, the speech, and the occasion; (2) provide a sentence or two on what the speech does and/or is about; and (3) describe or evaluate the speech using the vocabulary that we are working on when reading the speech.

Although these are primarily to prepare you for the exams, I will add a component to the grades for the course to reward you for the contribution that timely completion of the abstracts makes to our classroom discussions. I will select days at random to collect your abstracts on one of the speeches we discuss that day, will read the abstract and assign an "S" or "U" grade to them. Please note I will accept the abstract only at the beginning of class before the discussion begins, and only when you are present in class for the discussion. My criteria for an "S" will be:

Since the grading of abstracts is a reward for your preparation for class discussion, a discussion to which you do not contribute if absent, abstracts cannot be made up after an absence.  Since your provided the University-required documentation for me to permit make-up is too cumbersome for the weight of the abstracts in the final grade, I will use an alternative: I will collect abstracts seven times during the semester (grading your best five). Abstracts not handed in when I collect them cannot be made up. If you prefer the documentation requirement to this method of make-up, please notify me within the first week of class. A grade for the semester, ten percent of the total grade, will be assigned based on your total number of S's out of the five possibilities.

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Academic Integrity

You are responsible for knowing the university's Code of Academic Integrity. The principles governing that policy are two-fold: (1) the work that I should mark as yours is material that you have authored, and (2) you have the responsibility to give recognition to others whose work you incorporate in your projects. You should review the university's policy and make certain that you implement these two principles. Your abstracts should be your own writing, but they can follow group discussions. I encourage group study for exams, but in the examination room, work should come from your brain alone and onto the paper. I will ask all students to complete and sign the honor code on examinations.

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Incompletes

As in all University courses, an "Incomplete Contract" will need to be negotiated if all work is not completed by the end of the semester, or a grade of "F" will be assigned to missing work. Grades are due 48 hours after the final exam and without completing this negotiation by that time, a grade of "F" will be assigned to missing work.
Contents
Home
Daily Schedule
Assignments
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Online Material
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Orientation