Title: Course Policies
Course: CJ601-01:Seminar in the Administration of Criminal Justice > Section: Course Information

Course Engagement:

You might wonder: How do we get participation/engagement points? Participation in this course consists of logging in and engaging with the online material (viewing pages in order to watch videos, viewing slides, etc.), as well as coming to class and being an active participant in discussions. That's it! The good thing is that Canvas does a good job keeping data on when students are logged into the course (e.g. when they logged/logged off, how many pages accessed, and for how long).

Engagement points are designed to serve as buffer points. As long as you're accessing material and actively participating in discussions during class, you'll get the points -- it's really that simple. Put another way: you have to work really hard to not get the points.

Late Work:

I do not accept late work. In extreme circumstances, however, I may be willing to grade late work, but written documentation will be required. But this is not a guarantee.

The truth is, if you submit an assignment a little bit late after the due date, but it is submitted before I begin grading on that assignment, I will not treat it as late -- I will treat it as submitted on time. Please do not email to ask for an extension, or to let me know that you might submit a little late -- you're just alerting me to late work. Just get it in by the time I begin grading on that assignment.

Extra Credit:

You may notice an "extra credit" column in the gradebook. This column is just for me, since I award extra credit at the end of the course. This means that there is no formal extra credit offered.

The way I do extra credit is: At the end of the course, I “take stock” of how everyone has done in the course. In particular, I look closer at students with marginal grades in the course (e.g. those in the high B/low A range). I look at those students' grades, and compare it to their overall engagement in the course. I'm basically trying to see if they are more engaged than their grade reflects: I assess 1) whether they have strong (e.g. A level) engagement, but are earning a lower grade (e.g. a B) because of points earned on assignments, and 2) whether they are “generally” making an effort to fully answer the questions on the assignments, in a timely manner.

For example, for a given marginal student (let’s say they have a high-B), I look at all their engagement and effort on the assignments. If they have been A-level engaged, and it seems (at face value) that they are putting in A-level effort on the assignments, but their grade is a high-B, then I figure out how many points this student would need in order to bump their grade up to match their efforts in the class (to get them to the A). Then, I do this for nearly all students with marginal grades in the course — to get a general idea of “how many points, generally, would bump these marginal-grade students up to the next grade?” Once I get this, I now have a number of points to award ALL students. This means everyone will almost always be awarded points. Students will not have points taken away. As such, everyone will benefit and get *that many* extra credit points.