The homework grade will be comprised of two activities: ALEKS and the Chapter Summary Worksheets.
ALEKS - ALEKS is an online homework system designed to drill you on the basic concepts presented in this course. Your homework content will be based on your current knowledge of the topics we will be covering so each student's homework set will be individualized to their learning needs. At the beginning and end of the course you will be given a diagnostic exam to see where your competence with the material stands. The initial and final diagnostics will be given at the University Testing Center. You will be given 3% of your overall homework grade upon completion of the inital diagnostic. It is in your best interest to do as well as possible on the diagnostic since the amount of homework you will be given will be based on the result. In other words, the more competence you show at the beginning the less you will need to review and the smaller your homework amount will be. The final diagnostic will constitute 10% of your final exam grade.
ALEKS requires an access code which comes bundled with your textbook for the course(Recommended) . If you choose not to buy the bundle you will need to purchase an access code directly from ALEKS (much more expensive). The web address for the ALEKS site is http://www.aleks.com/
To get started, you will take your access code to the testing center at which time they will give you the course code to access the course and take the diagnostic. The exam consists of 25-30 questions and will take you ~2+ hours to complete so make sure you have enough time set aside to complete it. You do not need to bring any other items with you to the exam as the calculator and periodic table etc. will be provided. Just have a pencil or pen handy.
7% of your overall homework grade will be based on the percentage completed in the ALEKS system.
CHAPTER SUMMARY WORKSHEETS - The remaining 5% of your homework grade will be comprised of your average grade on the chapter summary worksheets. For each chapter in the book that we cover, you will have a worksheet that requires you to 1)summarize each subsection in the chapter, 2) answer some simple conceptual questions about each subsection and 3) answer some more complex questions similar to those you might face on exams. Your grade on these worksheets will be determined by both completion and the grading of two questions at selected at random from each set of questions.
Your lowest ALEKS and your lowest Summary Worksheet score will be dropped before the final grade is determined.