Instructor: Dr. Pamela E. Mack

Contact information:

• Class meets MWF 11:15-12:05 in Hardin 100
  
• Email: pammack@clemson.edu (I try to respond to emails within 24 hours on class days)
• Office Hours: MWF 10-11, Mon. 1:25-2:15 and by appointment in Hardin B06 (basement level)
  
• Office phone: 864-656-5356
  
• Teaching assistants:
• Ashley Goldberg, office hours 11:30 am-12:15pm Tuesdays and Thursdays, Hardin B01
  
• Amanda Haskew, office hours 10:15 am-12:15 pm Tuesdays, Hardin B01
  

• to learn to examine the impact of technology on society and think about to what extent technology can change history.
• to gain an understanding of how social forces shape the development of technology.
• to become better citizens in a technological world.
  
• to learn how to evaluate historical information.
• to be able to analyze the different approaches taken by historians.
  
• to practice analytical writing on topics related to these objectives.

• two in-class exams                       30%
• quizzes                                       10%
• discussion board                          10%
• participation credits                      10%
• argument paper                            25%
• final exam                                    25%  

The attendance policy for this course is as follows: 5 absences allowed without penalty, 3 points off the final grade for the course for each additional absence.  Excuses will be accepted only for major problems; students are expected to use their allowed absences wisely to cover special activities, minor illnesses, and car problems. When an excused absence is requested the absence must be documented and beyond the student's control.  Lateness will be dealt with in the following way: no penalty for up to five minutes, one half absence after 5 minutes. Please speak to the professor or the teaching assistant taking attendance in advance if you must leave early--if you leave early without doing so you will be penalized half an absence.  If the professor or a substitute does not arrive within 10 minutes of the scheduled starting time of the class students may leave.

Fairly detailed lecture notes for this class are posted on the web (access them by clicking on the lecture title in the schedule below).  Hopefully, you will find that this allows you to listen and think about the material presented in class rather than struggling to write down the details.  However, think about whether you are a person who doesn't remember something unless you write it down; you may decide that you need to take detailed notes yourself rather than simply annotate the notes posted on the web.   When you are listening to lectures concentrate on the ideas and connections presented; this course is not about learning a set of facts but about learning how to analyze the connection between technology and society.

Quizzes will mostly be multiple choice tests based on the reading.  They will be posted on Blackboard Wed. at the end of class and are due before class on Friday.  Quiz 1 and 11 are surveys and you get full credit if you complete and submit the survey.  Quizzes are found by going into Blackboard and clicking on assignments and then on quizzes.  Quizzes 2-10 will be 10 questions each.  I want you to have plenty of time but I do want people to do the reading before taking the quiz, so you have one hour to do the quiz (which should take most people about 10 minutes).  Your grade will be lowered if you go over one hour. Your lowest quiz grade will be dropped if you do all 11.

Blackboard discussion questions (bb) will be posted weekly on the Blackboard learning system.  This is a required assignment for the course, rather like the journals some other courses assign.   The goal of the Blackboard discussion is to allow more discussion of the reading and the lectures than is possible in class. You can read comments left by others and add your own for everyone in your group to read.  You may respond to directly to the question asked or respond to another student.  I will place a new discussion topic on the system every week, starting the second week of class. Topics will be closed to further comments after two weeks.

Your participation in this system will be graded on the basis both of quality and quantity. Contributions to the internet discussion should be thoughtful comments on the reading and/or the professor's notes  and/or the comments of other students, usually one or two paragraphs long (150-400 words).  To get an A you need to say something new and worthwhile about the question (not just repeat what other students have said).  Personal experience is appropriate and grammar and spelling are not important so long as your point is clear.  Blackboard discussion grades will available on Blackboard before the middle of the term so that you can see how you are doing. Your grade for the Blackboard discussion board will be the average of your 12 highest grades for individual topics (there will be at least 14 topics).  You will get only one grade per topic, but if you write more than one post on a topic all your posts will be taken into account in deciding your grade for the topic.  Posts after the deadline for that topic will receive no credit.

Participation credits: You can earn these credits in several different ways, all of which will be listed in the assignments section of Blackboard under participation credits.  You can attend a lecture approved by the professor (these will be listed in the syllabus as the semester goes along), turn in a write-up of the lecture, and get up to 2 points credit for each lecture write-up.  You can do three assignments using historical material from the New York Times (see below).  You can rent and view up a film from a list provided by the professor, write a critique of the film, and get up to 2 points credit for each film critique.  You may participate particularly actively in class discussion on a regular basis, or in the Course Journal in Blackboard (found under tools).  You can earn two points for each one, but to get those points you need first to make your contributions to one of those sites (in Blackboard under tools) and then afterwards submit a description of your participation in that activity in the space provided in the assignments section of Blackboard.   You can do a reading project, as assigned by the professor, and turn in a write up for up to two points.  These assignments will all be graded good/poor/no credit for 2, 1 or 0 points.  You may earn up to a total of 10 points from any combination of these activities.  If you have excess absenses or want to drop more quiz grades you may speak to the professor about doing more than 5 of the participation assignments.

The New York Times has prepared special web resources for this course on a web site called Epsilen, with direct links to articles in the newspaper from many years ago.  This gives you the opportunity to see how people thought about certain historical stories in the past.  Three Participation Credit assignments will be posted using this New York Times material.  However, you must pay ($15) for access to Epsilen, the New York Times web site for classes.  To sign up, go to the campus bookstore, ask at the desk to sign up for New York Times Epsilen for Hist 122, and pay your money.  The list of people who have paid will be sent to the New York Times at the end of each week, so you can expect to have access by the end of the Monday after you pay.  You can then follow the link in the participation credit assignment to sign in to Epsilen and access the material (if you have not paid the link will not let you sign in).

Two tests will be given during regular class meetings.  The final exam will be held Dec. 12.  Both the tests and the final exam will be essay tests and open books and notes will be permitted.  On the tests you will write one essay of 500 to 1000 words from a choice of two questions (on the final you will write two essays).  There is advice on taking this kind of test at:  http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/PamMack/lec122/ess122.htm and instructions for online tests at: http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/PamMack/lec122sts/onlinetests.html.  The tests, the argument paper, and the final exam will be handed in via Blackboard and screened by the Turnitin plagiarism detection system.  (This system does keep a copy of your paper--if you have a problem with that please speak to the professor.) 

It is cheating to cut and paste or otherwise copy portions of a argument paper, exam, or discussion board posting from a book or web site, even if you change a few words, unless the words are quoted and the source is given.  It is poor writing for more than about 20% of your paper to consist of quotes.

Laptops: Turn off sound in class or group situations.  You may use your laptop in class only for tasks related to this course.  That means that in addition to tasks the professor asks you to do on your laptop, you may use it to take notes, to view the course notes, or to browse to web sites related to the material being discussed in class.  Do not email, instant message, chat, do homework, download music, look at Facebook, or play games during class.  Students using their computers for non-class related purposes will receive one warning.  If there is a second offense during the same class period that student will be marked absent.

Portfolio: This course meets the Social Science and STS general education requirements, and so you should be putting essays that you write for this course in your general education portfolio.  Please put the following documents in the following sections of your portfolio:

Social and Cross-Cultural Awareness:

Class Schedule: