Dear POLI 1 Students, and Esp My Online Students Who Are Not in Class with Me This Week!

Dear POLI 1 students, and esp my online students who are not in class with me this week!

You have signed up for or are waitlisted for one of my POLI 1 classes.

Please pay careful attention to this letter and read it completely. It will explain almost everything you need to know to get started and to be successful in the class this term.

Participatory Learning:Right off, you should know that this is a hands-on and participatory version of POLI 1 (even the online version of this class.)If you are looking for a class where you only read material and take tests anonymously, you should opt to take someone else’s class.In this class you will have an opportunity to engage in a lot of publicinteraction both on-line and also in your community. While you will be able to flexibly schedule a lot of this work into your own schedule, public and hands-on learning and engagement are a core part of the learning method for this class. Most students find that this is one of the most rewarding parts of their POLI 1 learning experiences.

Committed to Your Success: Please know that I am committed to your success—both your actual learning and your successful completion of the class. Typically, over 70% of my students who complet the class with me earn A’s and B’s and the single most common grade often an A+. I hope you will be as successful as these students have been.

Please set up a one-on-one short meeting with one of our class TAs. You do this by following this link:

I also strongly encourage you to get to a longer tutorial help-session with one of our Class TAs in the first week or two of the term to touch base and understand the class. And, I’ll give you extra credit for doing so too!

In the meanwhile, please read the letter below!

Warmly,

Nicky Gonzalez Yuen, Ph.D., JD
Instructor, DeAnza College Political Science Department

p.s. GOOD LUCK THIS TERM, and remember, you all are really smart!

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All of the details of this class are explained on the Canvas website for the class. Spring 2017 is the first time I am using Canvas, so there may be a few wrinkles along the way. Please be patient as we sort these out. Please log into Canvas as soon as you can to get the details.

The Canvas website will be supplemented with my personal webpage for the class at You can access this web page via Canvas or by going straight to that URL. The nypolisci.org website is where you will find your weekly reading and video assignments.

When you log onto Canvas, please start with the main items from the class syllabus. Although the Canvas pages are pretty self-explanatory, let's focus here on the key elements of the class syllabus:

Overview and Learning Goals
Required Texts
Grading & Assignments

Overview and Learning Goals. This page describes the six class learning goals. You should understand these learning goals because ALL other assignments in the class are aimed at accomplishing these learning goals.
Required Texts:This explains what books and articles you should acquire. Most of these are on-line and free, but will need one magazine subscription for The Nation (cost= about $10.00 for the online edition); and there is one book you will have to buy, The Politics of Power, 7th Edition.
Grading and Assignments: This pageexplains how you earn points in the class and what you need to do to earn a given grade. You will see that we offer a variety of modes of learning and ways of demonstrating your learning. For the class there are 1000 possible points and to earn an "A" grade you need just 934. If you are taking the class on a pass/fail basis,you need just 700 points. There are also 150 points of possible extra credit for students taking the normal 12-week version of the class.On this page you can click on the assignment links for detailed directions for each type of class assignment.

Each week you havetwo regular things to turn in:

WednesdayWeekly Quizzes-taken on Canvas. EachQuiz will have 10 questions and you will be given 15 minutes. You will have multiple attempts at the quiz but over the course of the term you will have increasingly fewer attempts. I will count your high score so keep taking the quiz until you get the score you want or you run out of attempts. Quizzes should be completed by 11:59PM on Wednesday. Weekly Quizzes are worth 30 points each. Over the quarter you will have 11 quizzes. I will drop the low score among these quizzes. So there are a total of 300 quiz points.
Thursday Chat Dialogues: For Class Participation creditstudents will find a partner your class section and carry out a weekly chat dialogue/discussion using a series of prescribed questions as well as two questions of your own. This is your opportunity both to reflect on your substantive learning of the class material and also your process as a student. This will be your best opportunity to give and receive peer-based support for your learning in this class. Online students will find a partner during the first week on the Canvas discussion forum. On-campus students will find partners in class.

Other Assignments: In addition to the weekly quizzes and chats, students will have a variety of other written assignments throughout the term. These are typically due on Fridays:

Civic Engagement Field Work: Students will participate in a minimum of 12 hours of political field work over the quarter. You will choose from our pre-screened list, being sure to find a placement that matches your availability and interests. You will then turn in 3 Civic Engagement Field Reports documenting and describing your field work with a short reflection section relating to key concepts from class readings and videos. These reports are worth 240 points total over the quarter.
4-6 page Paper: The task of this paper is to tell a story examining the form of oppression that most centrally affects YOUR life. In the course of your narrative, you will demonstrate your ability to relate the assigned class material to your actual life.
Term Project: You will conclude the class with a term project which ideally is carried out through your Civic Engagement Field Placement.

Getting Help! There are a few ways of getting help in this class.

Facebook Group: First, there is a class Facebook group where you will interact with other students in the class, ask and answer questions, comment on class material, post related articles, videos, etc. Join now!

We use of the class Facebook group not only because it is a useful source of information and interaction about the class, but also because it, along with many other forms of social media, is an indispensible means of political communication in contemporary society. If peer-to-peer participation is the lifeblood of a democracy, then Facebook and other means of communication using social media are essential tools to master. So, go ahead and play with this and see how it works. If you are not comfortable using your real name on Facebook, you may set up an alias account using your real first name and a pseudonym for your last name. Just be sure to let ME know who you are on Facebook and keep reminding me!

Teaching Assistants and Help Session: A number of classes in the De Anza Political Science Department use class teaching assistants to provide peer mentoring and support. You can find a list of my Teaching Assistants and a schedule of help sessions (for which you can earn extra credit!!)on the nypolisci.org site under the tab for “How to Succeed/Getting Help.” (I’m still working on how to move these pages over to Canvas but have not done this yet.)

You will be assigned a class TA who will reach out to you at the beginning of the term. Please reach back out to your TAs and use them to answer basic questions about the class, to get help with class assignments, and to deepen your understanding of the class content.

Reach out to ME!!!! I ALSO strongly encourage you to come visit ME in my office hours, and/or to reach out to me via email. We can set up an in-person meeting and/or arrange to talk via the Zoom on-line video conferencing service.

I hope this overview has been helpful to you. Please post questions you have on the class Facebook page or write back to me directly via email at .

GOOD LUCK THIS TERM, and remember, you all are really smart!

Nicky Gonzalez Yuen, Ph.D, JD
Instructor, DeAnza College Political Science Dept