2. Policy

Student Responsibility: Students are responsible for all material covered in the lectures, the reading assignments, and the report problems.

Regular and diligent participation in (1) in-class assignments (problem solving, report presentation), and (2) out-of-class assignments (report problem solution, report writing) are expected. To encourage diligence and participation, there will be team presentation(s), by randomly selected team(s), in many class meetings using the formal reports submitted by the team.

Students are responsible for knowing all announcements made in class, via e-mails to the class, and/or on the course web site. (If you are absent from class, you should obtain all class announcements from your teammates or other classmates; please do not send e-mail to the instructor about class announcements. You can also go to the class e-mail archive on listserv to look up for past announcements; instructions on how to access the class e-mail archive is sent out in a separate e-mail to the class.)

Student behavior: Upon entering the classroom, students are expected to respect the following rules of correct behavior:

• Arrive on time for class to start without disrupting the attention of other classmates.
• Turn off cell phone.
• Keep silence: Stop talking when the instructor begins to lecture. (Students will have opportunities to talk when requested to participate in class discussions.)
• Put other reading materials irrelevant to the course away (newspapers, etc.)
• No eating and drinking during lectures.

Solving report problems: Students are expected to work diligently to solve all report problems in collaboration with their teammates (either to explain to teammates, or to receive explanation from teammates) and to write team solutions in the team reports.

Emphasis is placed on problem formulation, derivation, in addition to problem solving.

Getting the answer to a problem is only half the effort. The other half is verifying the answer. Having numerical answers available to all report problems teaches you poor skills in checking your work. After all we don't put the answers to the exam problems on the back of the exam statement !

Team structure: Students should work within the established team structure.

All questions (technical or otherwise) should be posed to the team first; you will always get an answer from a team member.

Team leader and co-leader, working with teammates, should assign at least 2 team members to solve each report problem. Credits will not be given to solutions by individual students, without a collaboration from other teammates, to ensure the benefits of collaborative learning; see also team reports.

If no one in the team can satisfactorily answer a question, then the question becomes a team question that should be posed to the TAs.

If the TAs' answer was not satisfactory, or if you could not reach a TA for some reason, then the team can bring the question to the instructor as a team question, with documented written team discussion, attempt to solve the problem, and discussion with a TA (if possible).

Be sure to copy all emails about your team questions to your teammates for their info that you have brought the team questions up to the TAs or the instructor, and to confirm that no one in the team knows the answer.

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