SAS 004: Water in Popular Culture

Grading Policy:

Grades for this course will be determined by considering four weighted components: movie logs, discussion presentation, two writing assignments, and a final exam.

Grade Weights

movie logs = 30%
discussion presentations = 10%
report 1 = 20%
report 2 = 20%
final = 20%

Final Exam:

You will take a final exam that will test your understanding of the concepts covered in the lectures, readings and discussions. The exam covers all material for the course. Having just one exam at the end of a quarter is as much a test of your management ability to cope with a long-range deadline as it is a test of the content. If you choose to not discipline yourself to keep up with the work throughout the quarter, then you will likely do poorly on the final exam, because there is too much material to cram it all in at the end. Although the final exam is multiple choice, it is hard. In 2010, the mean score was 74%, with a standard deviation of 9%. I do not apply any curve in grading.

The best predictor of student performance in this course has been found to be performance on movie logs. When a student does all the movie logs well, then that means they have watched all the movies and done all of the readings. That means they are very likely to do well on the final and end up with a good score. Therefore, if you have gotten to week 3 or 4 and are not submitting your movie logs, you can expect that you are likely to get a poor grade.