Pre-lecture homework is part of the familiarize stage of learning and should be done immediately after studying the pre-lecture videos and reading but before performing the lecture. These questions are intended to work on skills low on Bloom's taxonomy, like identify and differentiate. The questions are delivered through Canvas quizzing. Each correct answer will receive 1 point. Pre-lecture questions for the first lecture of the week are due the Sunday before the week begins. You can find links to the pre-lecture homework on the course calendar. 

Post-lecture homework is the main practice stage of the learning cycle. It should be done as soon as possible after the foundational lecture stage. These problems work on skills throughout Bloom's taxonomy but focus on those in the middle such as explain, prioritize, analyze, and solve. The questions are delivered through Canvas quizzing just like the pre-lecture homework but problems can be worth 1 or 2 points depending on the difficulty. The pre and post-lecture homeworks combined will constitute 5% of your overall grade. All post-lecture homework for a given week are due the Sunday after that week. You can find the links to post-lecture homework on the course calendar.

Additional Practice Problems

   There are additional practice problems to supplement your learning. These are not for credit, but going and practicing these problems have been correlated with higher grades in the course. Practicing problems is how we learn physics. Find these problems through the BoxSand menu on the right. They are under the Fundamentals page for a given topic. For example click on Kinematics => Average Quantities => Fundamentals. There you will see drop down tabs under Practice filled with problems to practice, including many from past exams.

The final learning stage before assessment is the mastery stage. Challenge homework is meant to push your knowledge. It will involve analyzing systems that appear under-determined or vastly complex. You will have to synthesize multiple concepts into a single coherent analysis. It will challenge you and you will probably need to reach out for help. It will make you stronger. While these are to prepare you for the more challenging portions of the exams, the level of difficulty and scope may sometimes be above the level expected on exams. These assignments are also designed to help you practice organizing well presented solutions. These questions are graded by a human and are entirely based on partial credit. The answer is worth far less than the logic and reasoning used to arrive at the answer. See the Exams page on the syllaubs for more information about what is expected for a complete solution. Solutions are to be written by hand on paper or digital tablet, or formatted using math-type software like Latex or Microsoft Equation Editor. Solutions are to be your own, even if you work others analyzing the problem. See the Code of Conduct for information about plagiarism. A digital copy of your work must be submitted to Gradescope.com by the due date. If you work on a piece of paper, a picture from your phone works well for a digital copy. For information about setting up Gradescope, check out the Learning Tools page found on the course homepage. Challenge Homework problems for a given week are due Tuesday of the following week. Challenge Homework constitutes 10% of your overall course grade.

One of the major lessons we've learned through Physics Education Research is that students take much more than knowledge about physics away from this sequence. The most common thing past students say to us is that they learned how to learn in our course. Our broad sequence level learning objectives mostly go well beyond learning physics. One way research has shown to improve this meta-cognitive step is to do regular reflective writing exercises. This will be similar to a journal in that you'll be doing free-response writing. What is a little different is there will be guiding questions and we do want to you stick to the topic presented during that week's assignment. There are no right or wrong answers, you will not be graded on the quality of your writing. It is important to remain true to your experience and feeling regarding physics. The only requirement is that you write about the topic we ask and that you write at least 200 words. This is short weekly assignment that should provide a lot of bang for the buck, both points-wise and in its goal of keeping you thinking about the big picture. The reflective writings will constitute 4% of your overall grade and all you have to do is sit down each week for 20(ish) minutes and write about your thoughts and feelings. Each writing assignment will start out with a few Likert scale-type questions to warm you up before the free-response question. The assignment is administered through Canvas and you can find a link to each one in the course calendar. These should be done at the end of the week so you can reflect back on the week.

Summary:  The goal of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to review and synthesize what you have learned, heard, seen, or experienced in this course and to think about the connection to your everyday observations, personal interests, and studies. We value your genuine response, please don't feel the need to make up a fake experience that you think we want to hear. You are graded on completeness (200 words) and not on any form of correctness, so long as your writing is relevant to the guiding questions.