Attendance & Participation
This is an in-person class that meets twice a week. I expect you to come to class. As such, you’ll notice that attendance and participation make up 10% of your grade. Attendance will be taken at the end of every class meeting. However, sometimes things happen and life gets in the way. You get two ‘freebies’; you can miss up to two class meetings without any documentation, excuse, explanation or otherwise with no effect on your attendance grade. However, you are still responsible for the material we cover in class.
If you need to miss more than two days of class, then I will need an explanation and documentation. Two class meetings is an entire week of this course. Missing more than a week of the semester is a lot, but sometimes, there are legitimate reasons you might need to miss large parts of the semester. Reach out to me sooner rather than later about whatever is going on and we’ll find a solution.
If you are sick, stay home. While we have all returned to campus and daily life, Covid very much still exists, as do many other communicable diseases. So, please, if you are sick, do not come to class. If you have already used your two freebies, you will need to talk to me and provide documentation if you want an excused absence. If you don’t feel great but can still come to class, I encourage you to maintain safe practices such as masking and social distancing.
Academic Integrity
Plagiarism and cheating: don’t do it. All of the work you turn in for this course must be completed by you. You are expected to follow the GMU Honor Code in this course. Cheating and plagiarism include but are not limited to submitting work done by someone else, copying ideas without proper credit and citation, and using AI generated text in your assignments. Using ChatGPT or similar generative AI to complete course assignments is strictly forbidden. Whether written by another student, a friend, a scholar or a machine, writing that is not done by you must not be turned in under the guise of it being your writing, which all your assignments should be.
How Not to Plagiarize: Someone may say or write something really smart and you want to include in your own writing. (You may even be required to do this for some assignments!) However, simply copying what they said without attribution is plagiarism! In order to include things written by others, you must: (1) surround their words with quotation marks, (2) give credit to the author and source in your text, and (3) cite the source in your footnotes or bibliography. (We’ll talk more about footnotes, bibliographies and citation format in class.) For example:
In How Sex Changed, Joanne Meyerowitz writes, "like everyone else, [people in the past] articulated their sense of self with language and cultural forms available to them.”1
Technology
This is a history course, but it is a digital history course and thus is decently tech-heavy. That’s why it fulfills Mason’s General Education IT Requirement! You are expected to attend class with an Internet-connected device each meeting, preferably a laptop. While some of the things we’ll be doing can be done on a smartphone or tablet, many of them can not. If you only have a phone or tablet to bring to class, that’s okay; you’ll just have to buddy up with a classmate for some tech demonstrations or follow along on my screen. However, you will need access to a laptop or desktop computer to complete assignments outside of class.
You are expected and encouraged to use your device (smartphone, tablet or laptop) during class. However, please stick to class materials during class. That means no scrolling through Twitter, chatting on Discord, online shopping, watching a Twitch stream or whatever else in class. Attendance isn’t just about being physically present; you also have to be engaged and not distract yourself or your peers. I reserve the right to tell you to put your device away or to discount your attendance if you really aren’t paying attention. If something comes up during class and you need to take a phone call or text conversation, please take it outside; as long as you come back to class in a reasonable time frame or talk to me after class, your attendance will still be counted.
Late Assignments
Every assignment in this course has a due date. You can find them on both the class schedule and on the briefs for each assignment. You are expected to complete assignments by their due dates. However, just like attendance, sometimes things happen and life gets in the way. It is always better to submit something late than to not submit something at all. For a 10% penalty, you can, if you need to, turn in assignments late up until the Last Call date following the assignment’s due date. Those Last Call dates are February 28th and April 29th. Barring extreme circumstances, special exemptions or an official registered Incomplete, after February 28th, Projects #1, 2, and 3 and Blog Posts #1 and 2 will not be accepted. After April 29th, Projects #4, 5 and 6 and Blog Posts #3, 4, 5 and 6 will not be accepted. There is no Last Call date for the final presentation and reflection.
If something big is happening in your life and you believe you should be allowed to submit an assignment late (before the Last Call) without the late penalty, talk to me. I do give extensions for extenuating circumstances and I will work with you to make a schedule of completion that works for whatever is going on in your life. If you do not talk to me or we can not come to an agreement, late work turned in before the Last Call date will receive a 10% late penalty.
Resubmission
Learning technology is iterative. It gets easier and makes more sense the more you do it; you get better at technology the more you use it. I know that for many of you, this will be the first time you’ve used many of the programs we use in this course. So, if you receive a grade on a Project that you are less than satisfied with and you would like to try again, you can choose to resubmit. Respond to my feedback, fix any mistakes, polish up your work and you can resubmit any Project by the Last Call date. Resubmissions for Projects #1, 2 and 3 will be accepted until February 28th. Resubmissions for Projects #4, 5 and 6 will be accepted until April 29th. Blog posts and the final reflection may not be resubmitted. To resubmit a Project, do not simply edit your original post; create a new blog post for the resubmission so that I can see the changes you made.
Disability Accommodations
Everyone in this course deserves equitable access and equal treatment. If you are seeking accommodations for this class, please contact me as soon as possible to make necessary arrangements. All academic accommodations must be arranged through the Office of Disability Services. Please visit https://ds.gmu.edu/ or call (703) 993-2462 for information on the ODS registration process. If ODS forms need to be signed by me, it is your responsibility to bring me those forms.
If there is ever a time in class where I can do something small to make class easier for you, please let me know. Whenever possible, I will provide closed captioning or a transcript for audio and video assignments. If you need to fidget, wear headphones or switch between tasks to stay on target in class, please do so. I will only ask you to stop if it becomes a distraction to myself or others in the class.
Non-Discrimination
This course and George Mason University enforces a non-discrimination policy to provide “equal opportunity and an educational and work environment free from any discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status or genetic information.”
Privacy
As you’ve probably noticed this far down this webpage, we will not be using Blackboard for this course. All of your course materials will be provided here on this website, in class, through Slack or via email. You will also be making your own blog on the web; a lot of your work will be public. This reflects a lot of what digital history is; public scholarship and open-source programs are at the heart of digital history and that’s a good thing! However, privacy is still a concern and an important one. Please be careful about the things you post online. This is good practice, not just for this course, but for life in general. You are not required to put your name or any identifying information on your blog, so long as I know which blog is yours. Please also be respectful of others in your responses. Don’t hold back your opinions, but remember that your writing is public. In addition, I will at no point share your name, face or work anywhere online without your explicit permission.
Class communication will be done in-person and online through Slack or email. However, in compliance with university rules and FERPA, your grades will only ever be shared with you (and only you) via email. If you misplace your grades and need me to send them to you, please ask me for your grade over email with your GMU email account.
Course Enrollment
It is your responsibility to verify that you are properly registered for this course.
After the last day to drop a course, withdrawal from the course must be approved by the Dean and will be approved only for nonacademic reasons. Undergraduate students wishing to drop a class after the drop date may choose to exercise a selective withdrawal.
Footnotes
- Meyerowitz, Joanne. How Sex Changed: A History of Transexuality in the United States. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. ↩︎