Attending lectures is not required, but because lectures are such an important part of your learning experience, we offer an incentive to attend lecture regularly. This incentive is opt-in only and students may choose not to participate. Opting-in only applies to lecture attendance; regardless of whether you opt-in for this incentive, section attendance is required (and graded) for all students.

Students who attend consistently—missing no more than 5 lectures using flex ("unexcused") absences—will be permitted to treat their final cumulative exam as optional and only their highest 3 exam scores will count toward their final grade (20% each, 60% total). This means that they can either 1) choose to not take the cumulative multiple-choice final, or 2) take the cumulative multiple-choice final and drop the lowest of the 4 exam grades.

Students who wish to opt-in for this attendance incentive must do using this form by Monday, August 31st 11:59pm. The decision to opt-in or not is final and cannot be changed once the deadline has passed. Students who fail to complete the form by the deadline will be considered opting out of the incentive and accepting the final as required.

Students who enroll in the course after that date will be given 24-hours to decide whether to opt-in or not. Students who do not opt-in will be required to take the final exam and all 4 exam grades will count equally toward their final grade (15% each, 60% total).

Learn more about what to do if you need to be absent from lecture.

We will take attendance in this class using the Acadly app. If you do not wish to opt-in for our attendance incentive, you do not need to download Acadly, as your attendance will not be counted.

If you DO wish to opt-in, download the Acadly app to your phone and join our class using the invitation you’ve been emailed (look for the email the first week of class). At the start of each class, make sure your Acadly app is on and running and that your Bluetooth is enabled. Attendance will be taken via Acadly at a randomly determined time in each class, beginning on the second day. 

If you are present in class but your attendance is not recorded due to technological error, you are responsible for making sure your attendance is corrected and recorded before leaving class that day. You can do that by approaching a member of the teaching team (Dr. Hard, Dr. Grisham, or a course coordinator) after class. Errors in attendance must be corrected before leaving class. If you cannot stay after class to correct your attendance, then that day's attendance will be counted as a flex absence (of which you can have 5 before the final exam becomes required). Students are expected to report errors in attendance honestly, in accordance with Duke’s Community Standard.

We may also use Acadly for occasional in-class polls and practice questions to help you prepare for exams. See section on Missed Work for more details on attendance, including the policy for excused absences. 

Attendance for the full lecture is expected to receive attendance credit. The teaching team will take attendance every lecture, but will audit several randomly selected lectures for which students must be present for the entirety of the lecture to receive attendance credit that day. This means that if you are late for, or leave early on, one of those randomly selected lectures, it will count as 1 of your 5 flex absences. So, if you opt-in for the attendance incentive, make sure you can consistently come and leave lecture on-time!

Attempting to earn attendance credit without being physically present, or leaving immediately after attendance without communicating with the instructors or course coordinators, goes against the spirit of the attendance policy and will result in a loss of attendance credit. 

In the event that in-person lecture cannot be held (e.g., Drs. Hard and Grisham get sick, change in Duke policy), we will either offer a live Zoom lecture or an interactive online lecture using the PlayPosit tool that you can attend or view to earn attendance. 

For each lecture listed on our Canvas webpage, you will find a downloadable outline in advance of the lecture. Lecture slides will be made available after lecture because posting them before would give away many of the surprises we often have in store!

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