** Updated 4/1/2020 **
Physics 203 | Spring 2020 Differences |
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Departmental Announcement: "The abrupt need to switch to remote delivery will create some uncertainty. Normally, a syllabus states the rules of the course explicitly, but less so this term. We may need to adapt course delivery methods and our approach to assessing your work. We want to get it right, and so we ask for your understanding if some procedures, including the delivery of midterms, need to be modified during the term."
Several sections of our course will have different forms this Spring 2020 term. Here they are and what they will now look like:
Experiencing Obstacles?
If you are experiencing obstacles to your engagement in this course, please let your TA, your instructor, or the Office of Student Life know! The Office of Student Life can direct you to the appropriate help if you do not have a computer, reliable access to the internet, or are experiencing life challenges such as food insecurity or financial challenges. The instructors each care about every student in our class, and will work to remove any obstacle to your learning process!
Lectures
Lectures will still function largely the same! Our lectures will still be flipped with questions coming from our usual templates (which can be found on the course calendar). We will still deliver questions to you via Learning Catalytics (Purchase here if you do not have a subscription already.).
Lectures will be delivered via Zoom this term. You can access your lecture from a link to Zoom located on the course Canvas page. Links to the Canvas page will be placed on the course calendar, where you can find most resources for this course, as usual. Please read through the Zoom hints listed below!
Lectures will be available from 8:00 am - 8:50 am, 9:00 am - 9:50 am, and 3:00 pm - 3:50 pm. Please attend the section for which you are registered. Our current contract with Zoom unfortunately has a cap to the number of participants in any session. We will be joined by a third instructor this term, Ryan Scheirer, who teaches at OSU Cascades campus.
Async | If you are not able to make it to a live-lecture, there will be an asynchronous (Async) option to earn lecture "attendance". These will be assignments available on Canvas for you to complete. You either do the live session OR the Async, but not both. We will give credit for any answer, correct or not, given in Learning Catalytics during a live-lecture session as we have the last two terms. However, for Async assignments, credit will only be given for correct answers. Our research shows that students who participate in live-lectures earn almost a full letter grade higher in this course. We strongly encourage you to participate in the live-lectures where we will be working on problem solving.
Lab
Our labs will experience one of the larger shifts from what you have experienced so far on campus.
Labs will begin week 3 of the term. You will complete your lab at home, and are encouraged to work in groups with one another. Most labs will feature a central simulation for you to explore, take data, and analyze that data.
You will then turn in your lab reports via Gradescope (or possibly Canvas, this will be finalized shortly!)
Lab TAs will be available to provide help for the first hour of every scheduled lab session. You are welcome to attend any section you wish! The instructors suggest forming a group to work through each lab with. With your group, attend a lab section and work through the lab together. This will likely let you work faster, learn more, and have a lot of fun! If you are looking for a lab group, check on Slack for others who would also like to form a group!
Recitation
Recitation will be functionally similar to on campus recitation sections, except it will occur online via the use of Zoom. You must attend the recitation section for which you are registered. An essential purpose of recitation is small group work with a higher instructor to student ratio.
You can locate your recitation section Zoom sessions on Canvas.
Exams
Exams will be quite different from our previous in-person experiences. We will have five cumulative exams this term. Each exam will feature questions from the most recent material learned. Topics within physics, as in the natural world, inherently interconnect and overlap. Questions, therefore, will often feature previously covered content. Expect questions involving kinematics, mechanics, rotational motion, thermo and fluid dynamics, oscillations, and superposition throughout this term!
Exams will be released at 7 pm on the Wednesday of exam weeks. Once you start, the first 20 minutes of the exam will be multiple select questions with no partial credit given. After the first 20 minutes that part of the exam will no longer be available. Then you'll have 40 minutes to write solutions to a few workout problems. These will be scanned and turned into Gradescope by the time limit. The entire exam will take 60 minutes, including time to upload your work.
See the course calendar for the exam schedule.
Each exam will be worth 16% of your course grade.
The lowest grade among your midterms will be dropped and not used to calculate your exam score for the course.
Grades
Here is the grade breakdown for this term. Note exams are structured differently, and reflective writing is now worth 5% of your course grade. Other portions remain the same.
| Activity | % Grade |
| *Combined Pre/post-lecture homework | 5 |
| *Lecture (Learning Catalytics) | 5 |
| **Challenge homework | 8 |
| Reflective writing | 5 |
| **Lab | 8 |
| ***Recitation | 5 |
| Midterms 1 - 5 | 16 each, lowest midterm grade dropped |
* Full credit is given for over 85% correctness of pre, post, and lecture questions. In-class lecture questions are given full credit regardless of correctness. Late assignments on Canvas will lose 15% per day until it reaches a cap of no more than 50% full credit lost. This means you always have an incentive to do work late, even many many days after the due date.
** Late assignments on Gradescope are accepted on a per case basis. You must contact your instructor for late challenge homework and your lab TA for late lab work. You must also complete all labs to passing quality to receive a grade in this course.
*** You may miss one recitation without penalty.
The above calculation will be done in tandem with a separate one that only includes the exams - you will receive the higher of the two grades. This is to accommodate students who have already mastered, or feel they can master, the material without formal practice and assessment. I do not suggest anyone attempt this approach as I have statistics on how poorly it typically works out.
Canvas will not display your correct grade. It is notoriously bad at calculating grades. However, it does give a very rough estimate for your course grade that might help you get a sense of how you are doing.
Slack is a messaging application which you can install on your phone and/or computer. Much of the support around this course will be centered around this application. You can access Slack via a web interface, or you can download a locally run version on your computer and/or phone. We suggest a local version. Click on the link above to install Slack.
Slack is the place that you should go when you are looking for help, or when you would like to meet up with classmates to discuss a problem or assignment. You can start a Zoom session straight from a Slack conversation by typing "/Zoom". LAHHHs, the Wormhole, and instructor office hours will all start in Slack. There are existing channels set up, but you can also create your own channels for study groups. Public channels are still only available to OSU students and faculty. If you're concerned about your privacy, see the privacy section below. The public channels you need to know are:
- #ph203_spring2020 | Public channel for general discussion related to PH203
- #virtual_wormhole | Public channel to talk directly with TAs during wormhole hours
- #ph203e_lab | Public channel for general lab discussion. You will also be given a private lab channel for your group.
Face to face contact in this course will all be done via Zoom to enable social distancing. Lectures, recitations, labs, LAHHH, the Wormhole, study groups, etc will all use Zoom. You can run Zoom through a web interface, or you can install a local version to run on your computer. Click on the link above to access or install Zoom.
The Ecampus version of this course has been using Zoom to great effect for the last two terms. Over this time, we have discovered a few hints for effective communication and engagement in this course. Here are the most important of those hints:
- Connect to Zoom with a device that has a microphone. This can be your computer or even a phone!
- We will break you into smaller "breakout" sessions during live lectures. There you will tackle the problem at hand with 4 or 5 other students.
- Many students are initially reluctant to interact either because they are unfamiliar with their breakout room partners, or this new Zoom environment. Go ahead and try things! There is no penalty for being wrong or making mistakes! This course is designed around interaction between students, and Zoom is actually quite good at enabling this.
- Our favorite method of interaction between students in breakout sessions is for one student to share their screen (with the class template on it!), then have every group member work together to "annotate" the template to solve the problem.
- In light of the previous hint, download the template before class!
- You can set these shared screens with annotations to save automatically when the breakout session ends. They can be shared with the entire group at the end of the lecture period! Viola, notes!
- We will have Zoom and Learning Catalytics running at the same time. It is easiest to manage this if you have them running on separate devices (i.e. Zoom on your computer, LC on your phone). This is not always possible, but thankfully it is also quite manageable on one device.
There are many options for Zoom sessions that can be accessed in the settings menu here. We suggest you read through these options and choose those which suit how you would like to engage in the class.
LAHHH
Learning Assistant Homework Help Hours (LAHHH) will be from 4 - 7 pm on Mondays and Thursdays, and 10 am - 6 pm on Sundays. As much of the rest of the class does, this will be happening on Slack/Zoom. The LAHHH sessions will start on the course Slack space, #ph203_spring2020. This is a great place to meet friends to study. It is also a great place to get help or advice from former students who succeeded in this course previously! Plus it's fun!
Note: the channel has changed from #wormhole to #virtual_wormhole this term
Use the #ph203_spring2020 Slack channel to work with others and ask questions of the group. If you'd like to converse with a TA/LA during WormHole hours, please see the following:
Updated procedure for requesting help in the Wormhole
Help is provided by Wormhole Assistants in the order that requests are received. You ask for help using the Wormhole queue using the two-step procedure below:
- Open the queue. This link is also available on the Wormhole web page, and your instructor may have posted it on Canvas.
- Fill in your name (or alternate Slack ID) and choose your course. If you’re working in a group, choose one group member who will be the first contact for the Wormhole Assistant.
- The course number will tell the Wormhole Assistant which Slack course channel you’re in.
- Your name will help them identify you when you get there.
You can also post your question as a message in the #virtual_wormhole channel, but you should still place a request in the queue.
The Assistant will come to your course channel to provide help, or they may send you a message to come to the #virtual_wormhole channel, particularly if your course channel is very busy.
Check out the short video below for more information about using the Virtual WormHole.
https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_bawjh642
Privacy
We will be joined by students from the Cascades campus as well as OSU Ecampus. If you wish to remain anonymous, you are encouraged to change your name for Zoom sessions and on Slack.
Slack: you can edit your display name through the "Edit Profile" option. To locate this, open the options drop down menu by clicking on "OSU Physics ∨" in the upper left of your Slack app, then select "Profile & account".
Zoom: in a Zoom session you can edit your name by clicking on your name, then selecting "rename".
Zoom Recording: We plan to record and make available the Zoom lecture (only) sessions. While in the main room if you speak or share video that will show up in the recording. Feel free to type your questions in the chat. While in the breakout rooms with other students nothing is recorded so you are strongly encouraged to talk, share screens, and even engage with video.
Professional Etiquette: While you can use an alias in Slack and Zoom, administrators still know who you are. Negative behavior will not be tolarated and will be considered academic misconduct. Slack does not allow editing or deleting posts to help enforce this policy. Please be kind to everyone while on our system always.