A Digital Gazetteer of North Carolina

How to Succeed in This Course

Attend class

This is a discussion and collaboration-intensive course. Plan on attending every class meeting prepared to communicate with me and your classmates. We’ll keep our laptops closed unless we are doing some technical work related to the course.

Attending class is required, but given the circumstances of this semester I expect that people (including me) will need to miss class due to illness. We’ll deal with that the best we can, but please let me know if you aren’t going to be coming to class. Do not come to an in-person class if you are feeling ill.

During the last part of the course, you’ll work with 2–3 others on a project of your own design.

Do the readings

There is no textbook for this course. All readings have been made available through this course website. You must be logged in to download them.

I expect everyone to come to class having done the readings and ready to discuss them.

In the course schedule you can see the total amount of reading for each week. I rarely assign more than 20,000 words per week—usually closer to 15,000, often less. The average adult reader reads around 250 words per minutes, and most college students read a bit faster than that. So you should expect to spend around 75 minutes per week doing the reading for this course.

The readings have been selected to be interesting and accessible, but some of them may be a bit difficult. If you find a reading is difficult, don’t give up—take note of what you’re finding hard to understand, and come to class ready to share your experience.

Communicate about problems

If an unexpected problem arises for you during the course of the semester (serious illness, etc.), please let me know so that we can discuss an appropriate plan.

If you have a documented disability or medical condition, make sure to contact Accessibility Resources and Service.

If you are experiencing mental health issues, contact Counseling and Psychological Services.

If you are experiencing discrimination, harassment, violence or exploitation of any kind, see the resources listed here or https://safe.unc.edu/.

Evaluation & Grading

Course grades will be determined as follows:

15% Leading and participating in discussion

45% 3 technical assignments (15% each)

40% Final group project

For graduate students, points will be converted to letter grades as follows:

100-70: P, < 70: F

For undergraduate students, points will be converted to letter grades as follows:

100-95: A, 94-91: A-, 90-88: B+, 87-85: B, 84-81: B-, 80-78: C+, 77-75: C, 74-71: C-, 70-68: D+, 67-60: D, < 60: F

See the UNC Catalog for definitions of these letter grades.

Communicating with me

Email is the best way to communicate with me outside of class. It is particularly well-suited for short-answer and clarification questions.

I will try my best to respond to you within a 24-hour period, but in some cases it may take 2 to 3 days. Please keep this in mind when you are scheduling your own activities, especially those related to exam or assignment preparation. If you wait until the day before an exam or assignment due date to ask me a clarification question, there is a good chance that you will not receive a response in time.

If you need assistance understanding a concept or an assignment, or have another potentially complicated question, then please make an appointment for my office hours. If you ask a question via email that I believe is better suited for in-person discussion, then I will ask you to make an office hours appointment. If you have questions about how your assignment was evaluated, then you must make an office hours appointment. I will not discuss your grades or my evaluation of your work via email.

Honor Code

You are expected to know and respect UNC Honor Code. Collaboration, discussion, and seeking assistance from other students is encouraged in this class and is not inconsistent with the Honor Code. In the case of written work, all words drawn from others must be attributed appropriately.