May 15
Welcome to Virtual University. PHY 231C is now open. The course syllabus can be viewed at:
http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/2009summer/phy232c/
Online reading and homework sets are on Lon-Capa. In addition, there is a required textbook for this course (see the syllabus for details). There are instructions for using Lon-Capa in the syllabus. There are weekly homework sets due on Thursdays at 5:00PM. The first assignment is due on May 21st. All of the homework is inside the HOMEWORK folder at the bottom of the course table of contents.
There is a help room staffed by Graduate Teaching Assistants in The Strosacker Learning Center, Room 1248 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building. The help room will be open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Students should spend several hours per week, as needed, visiting the help room to work with other students and consult with teaching assistants. Both on and off campus students should visit the MSU campus for this purpose.
During help room hours, one graduate teaching assistant will provide online assistance via the post discussion option within Lon-Capa. Although you may get sufficient assistance on some of the less complicated questions via the “Post Discussion” option, you will get better service working with the graduate teaching assistants and other students in the help room.
There will be three midterms and one final exam given on the MSU campus – the dates, times and location are shown in the syllabus. There will be no make-up exams. However, if you miss a midterm exam for any reason you will be allowed to drop this exam and the midterm portion of your final grade will be based on the other two midterm exams. Only one midterm exam will be dropped – the final exam will NOT be dropped. If you take all three midterms, your lowest midterm exam score will be dropped when calculating your final grade.
If you are living far from the MSU campus at the time of the exam, beyond a reasonable commuting distance, or if you are traveling with an MSU-sponsored program, you may be able to arrange a proctored off-campus exam. Arrangements must be made well in advance of the exam – requests made after the deadline will not be accommodated and you will have to take the exam at MSU. See the exam section of the syllabus for details and deadlines for arranging an off-campus exam.
Also included in the exam section of the syllabus are midterm exams given in a previously offered course.
Questions seeking help with a homework problem should be posted online using the “Post Discussion” option in Lon-Capa. Do not e-mail these questions directly to me.
If you have an administrative question about the course, e-mail it to me and include the course title in the e-mail's subject line. If you do not include the course title in the subject line, the e-mail will likely go unanswered.
This message will be resent on Monday, May 18th.
Richard Hallstein
Instructor
Department of Physics and Astronomy
Last updated: May 15th, 2009