Bucknell University Honor Code

As a student and citizen of the Bucknell University community:

1. I will not lie, cheat or steal in my academic endeavors.
2. I will forthrightly oppose each and every instance of academic dishonesty.
3. I will let my conscience guide my decision to communicate directly with any person or persons I believe to have been dishonest in academic work.
4. I will let my conscience guide my decision on reporting breaches of academic integrity to the appropriate faculty or deans.

Academic Responsibility

We will take very seriously the Bucknell Honor Code and the principles of Academic Responsibility. Proper credit must be given to any sources uses in journals, poster, papers, and presentations whether the sources are on-line or in-print. Unsolicited reading or copying of other student or faculty files is as wrong as looking at or removing papers from a student or faculty member’s desk. It constitutes plagiarism to appropriate content from sources in print or online and submit it as being of the student’s authorship; this is one example of academic misconduct. It is the faculty’s role to report acts of academic misconduct the Board of Review on Academic Responsibility. Students are expected to read and abide by the principles explained in the Student Handbook.

Learning Goals

In this course, students will:

1. Develop writing, reading, speaking, listening, and information literacy skills necessary for collegiate-level academic work.
2. Develop capacities for independent academic work and become more accountable for their own learning.
3. Explore the intersection between technology and the humanities. Through course readings, written reflections, in-class activities and discussions, students will examine the interrelationship between technology and the human experience.

Instructional Materials and Sources

The required books for this course are as follows:

• Rossum’s Universal Robots, Karel Capek. Penguin Classics (ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0141182087).
• They Say, I Say, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein (ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0393538700).

All additional reading materials will be made available through Google Classroom.  Our Google Classroom site will specify the dates by which students are expected to complete readings and to turn in assignments.

Method of Instruction and Evaluation

Class periods are designed to include a variety of activities, which may include short lectures, discussions, videos, student presentations, and short writing. These activities are student-centered and require advance preparation and participation. Students are responsible for following the information given in the Google Classroom announcements to prepare themselves well for each class period.

The gradebook feature in Google Classroom will help students verify throughout the semester their progress toward the learning outcomes of the course.

Attendance: Your attendance and active engagement are very much expected. At the same time, I understand that you may experience hardship at some point in the semester. If that is ever the case, I expect that you will contact me immediately to offer a reasonable justification for missing a class meeting. (See Grading Contract below.)

Informal Writing: Some of our writing assignments are designed to help you learn, to make you reflect, and to capture the thoughts that you are evolving in this class. These assignments will be given to you and submitted through Google Classroom. Pay attention to the prompts so that you understand the topic and the nature of each writing assignment.

Formal Writing: We will also have assignments of a more academic nature for which you are expected to pay more attention to structure, grammar, vocabulary, citations, and bibliography. Just as for Informal Writing assignments, these will be given to you and submitted through Google Classroom. The most important of these will be your term paper, which will require literature search, reflection, and polished writing. There will be several stages for this term paper, as shown in the class schedule, and you are expected to complete all stages. That means, submitting only the final version will not suffice.

Group Work: you will work in teams to gain expertise that is narrowly focused on a given topic. Each team will take charge of a full class period in which they will give a short, formal presentation (no longer than 10 minutes) and then work as a panel to answer questions from the class and to instigate discussion. This kind of activity, named Socratic Seminar (or Socratic Circle), requires collaboration and within the team and participation from the class to explore deeply a given topic.

Preparation: You are expected to read, watch, and comment on course material in a discussion forum within Google Classroom created specifically for each source. Preparation assignments will be posted on occasion in advance of class discussion.

Engagement: Throughout the semester, you will be asked to identify topics of your interest to bring to discussion and to contribute to our learning as a group. You are free to choose one or more sources (as long as they connect to the class) to post on Google Classroom for others to explore and comment on.

Term Paper: Your term paper assignment will have five stages, each one evaluated separately. Stage 1 will be evidence that you have identified sources to support your writing and put together a tentative bibliography. You will need to use 5 sources from our class materials and identify and use 5 sources from outside the given class materials. Stage 2 will be an outline of your paper that defines the general structure of your writing. Stages, 3, 4, and 5 will be your first draft, second draft, and final version, respectively. Each of these last three stages needs to show incremental developments from earlier stages.

Letter grade assignments: At the end of the semester, the students’ letter grades will be determined according to what we call a “labor contract” described as follows.

Labor Contract

Completing the work assigned to you in this class will automatically earn you grade B. Missing classes, skipping assigned readings and assignments, being disengaged, or otherwise demonstrating lack of commitment learning will earn you a lower course grade. You will receive periodic feedback to guide your academic development and to help you reach the level of performance in the class that you desire. Below you can find the expectations for B and A grades. (Students who don’t reach the expectations of B will have earned lower letter grades.) When necessary, grade modifiers like + and – will be assigned considering what I have learned about your efforts and investment in learning.

Expectations for B Grade

The default grade for the class is B.

• No more than three unexcused absences.
• Miss no more than a total of three among Informal Writing, Participation, and Engagement assignments. (Note that these cannot be submitted late.)
• Complete all the five stages of the term paper with minimum performance level of satisfactory.

Expectations for A Grade

• No more than two unexcused absences.
• Miss no more than a total of two among Informal Writing, Participation, and Engagement assignments. (Note that these cannot be submitted late.)
• Complete all the five stages of the term paper with a minimum performance level of outstanding in a least three of them.
• Complete at least one unprompted Engagement assignment.

Access Statement

If you have a disability that may have some impact on your work in this class and for which you may require accommodations, please see the instructors and Heather Fowler, Director of the Office of Accessibility Resources at hf007@bucknell.edu, 570-577-1188 or in room 212 Carnegie Building so that such accommodations may be arranged.

Mental Health

In this classroom and on Bucknell’s campus we support mental health efforts. Mental health is just like physical health, which means you need to actively work on it. I will do my very best to support you, but remember that is not my expertise. (I can help you as a friend would.) There are various resources you can explore for resolving issues like motivation and time management (the Teaching and Learning Center), being homesick or blue, etc. A low stakes option that I can recommend is togetherall.com – after you create an account, you can talk anonymously to a community of peers who may be sharing similar life moments as yours.

Any student who is struggling and believes this may impact their performance in the course is encouraged to contact me, their in-major advisor, their Associate Academic Dean, or the Dean of Students at 570-577-1601 for support. (If you are comfortable talking to me, I will be better equipped to to provide resources and support.) If immediate mental health assistance is needed, call the Counseling & Student Development Center at 570-577-1604 (24/7).

Student-Athletes

If you are a student-athlete, remember that you are a student first and an athlete second. This means that academic work is your first priority. As per University rules, you will not be penalized for being away to take part in athletic events. Be sure to let me know in advance when you are going to miss a class period so that the absence is not counted against you. It is your responsibility, to manage your time wisely so that you can do well in this and in your other classes. Please do your best to meet the deadlines for your assignments and let me know if you run into any hardship.

Academic Engagement

Courses at Bucknell that receive one unit of academic credit have a minimum expectation of 12 hours per week of student academic engagement. Student academic engagement includes both the hours of direct faculty instruction (or its equivalent) and the hours spent on out of class student work. Half and quarter unit courses at Bucknell should have proportionate expectations for student engagement.