Policies

I will send weekly announcements on Canvas. I will also send you messages on Canvas or to your vcccd email address. Please turn on your notifications for Canvas and check Canvas and your vcccd email regularly.

For written assignments turned in on time, I will give you feedback on Canvas by Wednesday. Check "comments" and "rubric" to see my feedback.

To contact me, you can send me a message through Canvas, email jkagawa@vcccd.edu, or text/leave a voicemail at 805-626-0168. I will reply to your message within 24 hours (usually much quicker). On holidays and weekends, I need a break too, so I may not respond until Monday.

Your attendance in class and participation on Canvas are both important to succeeding in this class. Each activity is designed to either help you comprehend and process reading material or prepare, develop, and improve your writing. Attending and participating in class and on Canvas and completing all the assignments will help you succeed. However, we are all human and life happens. There may be times when you need to miss coursework. If you need to miss coursework, please contact me.

Drop Policy

All students, registered or on the waitlist, are expected to attend the first class meeting and participate on Canvas the first week. You may be dropped from the class if you do not participate in the first week of class (in person and/or on Canvas). Contact me if you are not able to participate the first week and want to remain in the class.

If you miss more than 10 hours of coursework (Canvas or in-person), you may also be dropped from the class. If you are not able to attend an in-person class and/or are not able to do coursework on Canvas, contact me so we can work on a plan.

I am required to drop any student who has not participated (on Canvas or in-person) by the Census Deadline for this class: September 27, 2022.

If you decide you need to drop the class, please let me know. You drop by logging on to myvcccd.com. Drop dates with and without a "W" are listed under 'Important Dates.'

Keeping up with assignments and completing them on time will help you be successful in this class. Managing your time will help you meet due dates. Plan the days and times you will work on Canvas and strive to meet the due dates. Each week, you will have 4-5 hours' worth of activities on Canvas. I have time set aside to grade your assignments based on the due dates. Falling behind can be stressful and overwhelming for students.

That said, if you occasionally need an extra day or two to complete an assignment, that is not a problem. However, work that is social, such as discussions on Canvas and peer reviews of writing must be completed on time. Discussions are closed for comments a week after the response due date.

You are the author for any assignment that you submit for this class. That means that you are stating all the ideas come from you. When you use another person's idea or words, you must cite them (state who and where the idea came from). This is academic honesty.

In this class, you will learn strategies and skills to appropriately cite sources. You will learn how to summarize and paraphrase, as well as the skills of quoting and citing sources in a research paper. This is the appropriate way to use another person's ideas to support your writing.

Academic dishonesty is not permitted by the college or in this class and will result in an F. Academic dishonesty includes plagiarism, cheating, and fabrication. Plagiarism means presenting someone else's work as one's own (example: copying and pasting text from websites or other electronic sources and presenting it in an assignment as your own work). Cheating means pretending (or helping others pretend) to have mastered course material through misrepresentation (example: copying in whole or in part from another student's test or paper). Fabrication means the intentional use of invented information (example: inventing data or sources of information for research papers or assignments).

All writing assignments on Canvas go through an application called "Turn it in" to check for plagiarism.

Ventura College’s COVID-19 safety protocols continue to evolve in response to the direction of our County Health guidelines and VCCCD Board Policy.

The college asks all students, employees, and visitors - regardless of vaccination status - to:

• Use the MyVCCCD App to complete the pre-screening process prior to coming to campus;

• Remain home if you are experiencing any symptoms or have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID;

• Use the MyVCCCD App to report any positive test results for COVID. The student health center will work with students to clear them to return to campus if they are asked to quarantine.

Although there is no mask mandate currently in place for Ventura County on within the VCCCD, we highly encourage everyone to wear a face mask while indoors or while outside in large groups. These protocols are subject to change, responding to current Public Health guidelines set by Ventura County and/or the State of California.

Find the most current COVID policy updates here.