MA 114

A few posts that have appeared in the class chats indicate that there may be students who are trying to do the homework before watching the videos that show HOW to do the homework. Bad strategy! You'll end up wasting a huge amount of time if you follow this procedure. About as efficient an approach as washing your dishes before you eat dinner.

Throughout the semester, WebAssign will keep you informed of your current average. At present the only grades you have are the first few homework assignments. You can get your current average from the Grades Tab at the top of WebAssign. When you click on the grades tab you'll see something like the box below:

So the example shown would show a present 89.13 homework average which would be a B+ according to the class grading scale (see the Grades Info page at the class web site). If you want to see the details on which this is based, click the 89.13 and you'll get a display that includes something like this:

This shows that the 89.13 average is based on a score of 7.5/10 on the first assignment and 13/13 on the second.

One of the most signficant changes in our use of WebAssign this semester is in the way extensions work. (An extension is an extra period of time allocated to work on an assignment after the due date has passed.) In previous semesters there was an initial "cost" for obtaining an extension, but work done while using an extension received full credit. The new policy is that extensions are "free," but only partial credit is given for work done while using an extension. Read the WebAssign Info page at the class web site for detailed information.

Remember that you MUST check your NCSU e-mail or else you will miss certain communications in this class. Once the semester is underway, we won't make much use of e-mail except in individual correspondence with you. But at the beginning of the semester before all students have learned about the need to access the web site regularly, we will use e-mail to send you preliminary information.

Many people (including me) have alternate e-mail that we primarily use. For example, I use  Gmail almost exclusively. You can set up your NCSU account so that all mail is automatically forward to your Gmail account or any other account that you routinely use. For information on how to do this, start here.

The semester officially begins Wednesday morning, August 20. However, your first batch of WebAssignments is already available in WebAssign. If you're not familiar with WebAssign, go ahead and try logging in to WebAssign and take a look at a few of these. Here's a checklist of your most important initial tasks:

• Read everything at the class web site: http://www.math.ncsu.edu/ma114/
• Make sure your computer is configured to support the Quicktime videos. (Install Quicktime if necessary, or update your Quicktime if you've got an outdated version.)
• Become familiar with how WebAssign works