Hello, and welcome to summer term.
I'm creating some of
these quick instructional videos just to walk you
through things to expect
this summer in this particular course,
which is the introduction to aging,
a six-week online asynchronous course.
Just to get us started here,
I'm going to show you
the Canvas course and walk
you through what to expect a little bit here.
We'll go through the syllabus a bit as
well. This is the home page.
This is now live,
and you can find information here on the home page,
just very general information such
as information about me.
You can go to this link here and
see a little bit of information about me,
including contact information and my office hours.
At any point, feel free to drop into this Zoom link.
This will be my virtual office space,
and I will be there Tuesdays from 9:00 A.M. to
noon and Wednesdays from 10:00 A.M. to noon.
Going back to the home page here.
You will also find a link to the syllabus.
I'm going to go over this here in a moment.
You'll find a link to the textbook, which is required.
It is available online through the library.
Make sure you're logged into your Wolf Web account,
and go ahead and click on this link and you can
access the textbook that way.
Then you will see modules listed down here.
There are only six modules, one per week,
and each one will be live at the beginning of the week.
I'll just show you what that looks like for Week 1,
just to give you a little bit of an idea.
Also up here, we have
some other modules that just have some helpful resources
and things that you can
use if you feel like they will be helpful to you.
But Week 1, I have posted an overview page.
This is always going to be the case just to give you
a overview of what to expect for the week.
We cover a lot of material each week,
and the term goes by really fast.
It's important that you stay on top of all of
your assignments and all of
your readings as much as possible,
because it's very easy to get
behind in a course like this.
Just want to make sure that you are
as organized as possible.
We've got some content here for you to explore.
The focus for this first week is learning
just generally what is gerontology about.
We're going to talk about the longevity dividend,
and how we can think about population aging in
a more positive way versus using a lot
of ageist stereotypes and attitudes.
We're going to talk about ageism in
general and social theories of aging,
and the science of aging,
so getting into,
what are the mechanisms that underlie
the process of aging physiologically?
We will talk about some physical changes of aging,
so some of the things that happen to us physically like
our skin wrinkling and
our hair turning gray, and things like that.
For each week you're going to find that you have
a discussion forum as a way for
you to engage with the material.
This week is mostly a way for you to introduce
yourselves to each other
and get to know who's in the class.
You also have a quiz.
This will be a way for you to apply what you've learned,
and then an opportunity to
just reflect back on what you did for the week,
and make sure that you've
completed all of your assignments.
We're going to go over to the syllabus.
Again, you can access this from
the home page by clicking on this button here,
or you can also access it by clicking on the panel.
You can do a preview by
clicking here or you can download this document.
We're going to go ahead and just do a preview here.
Again, this is a six-week course.
It runs pretty quickly.
I just have some information here at
the beginning about the description,
the required text, the goals.
I'm not going to go through this in detail,
but if you have any questions whatsoever,
please feel free to reach out to me as needed.
This is a course that fulfills a Gen Ed requirement,
which is one of the really
positive things about this course.
It also is one of
the requirements for the gerontology certificate.
Whether you're thinking about a certificate
or a minor, or a major,
this is the best course to start
with because it really does give you
that foundational material that
you need for the gerontology curriculum.
I have some information here about how to communicate.
Most information is going to go to your email.
I do post announcements,
and those should be also set up
to go to your email inbox.
Please just make sure to keep
track of any information that's coming to you.
Again, it's easy to fall behind in a course like this.
I just want to make sure that you are staying on top of
all of the information that I am communicating to you.
I'll be keeping track of your participation
through your engagement and your assignment submissions.
If I do notice that you're falling behind,
I will likely be making
a referral to the student success in advising.
Just keep that in mind.
I do want to make sure that you're able
to successfully complete the course.
My late policy essentially is,
I can't really accept late discussion posts,
quizzes, or exams.
That being said, make sure you reach out to me.
A lot of times I can be flexible and re-open
an assignment and still
allow you to submit something if it's late.
Papers, I generally will accept
up to four days late with an automatic deduction
of 10% after the due date for each day.
Again, reach out to me if
you have any questions on that.
I've got some other information
here about some misconduct,
guidelines, mandatory reporting, accommodations.
A couple things I want to point out as well.
This is the grading scale that we use.
You'll notice like for assignments,
everything is still graded on this scale.
At the end of the term,
when you get your final grade,
if it is something that is below a 63%,
this is a new policy at the university,
it's actually going to be reflected as NC or no credit,
rather than a D- or an F as your final grade.
This is just a way mostly to help students keep
their GPA up so that if you are
getting something less than a D in the course,
it will just be a no credit
and will not impact your GPA ultimately.
You will need to retake the course if it's
a requirement, but hopefully,
this is a way that students can be
better supported in terms of their success overall.
Let me get to our assignments here.
As I said, every week you're going to
see opportunities for engaging and applying,
so that we do those through discussions and quizzes.
Those are really just going to be through
Weeks 1 through 5.
Week 6 is going to be a little bit different,
because that's when you're going to be focusing on
your final exam and pulling everything together.
Also your gerontology paper is
something that you'll be working on throughout the term.
Just to give you a little
bit more information about this.
Again, after you explore the content each week,
you'll be engaging with your peers in discussion
and then applying your knowledge through quizzes.
I just realized I say Moodle here in my syllabus,
and I really should say Canvas, not Moodle.
The assignment that I mentioned is your paper.
You're going to be writing a research paper
of a topic of your interest.
I will be providing some video instructions on that,
so you'll get more detail
here very soon about the gerontology paper.
Then the only exam that you have
in this course is your final.
It's going to be similar to the quizzes,
but longer, and it will be
cumulative of everything you learned.
This is something that, again,
I will provide some more
detailed instructions so that you
feel more prepared as we get closer for that.
Of course, I have the outline here that just
shows what to expect for each week.
The dates of each week,
and also the topics that we're going to be covering.
You'll see that each week we cover a variety of topics.
Again, it's a very quick condensed course.
Your paper will be due at the end of Week 5,
so just make sure to be prepared for that.
Then like I said, your final exam
will be due at the end of Week 6.
That's going to be Friday,
and you'll have all day to complete your final exam.
That just gives you a little bit
of an overview of what to expect.
Again, the course moves fast.
Make sure that you reach out if you've got questions.
I'm happy to answer questions as needed,
and I'm happy to meet with you during
office hours at any time.
Good luck, welcome to summer,
and I hope you all are doing really well.