General Information for MA 114 online

The main components of this course consist of

• movies available via the Internet. You can access the online movies and WebAssignments via your computer at home or via a Windows or Macintosh computer on campus.
  
• web-based assignments (WebAssignments) which may be submitted over and over
  
• The MA 114 textbook is not required for this online class. (The text is Topics in Finite Mathematics by Page and Paur, available at the NCSU Bookstore for approximately $20.) Pick up a copy of the text if you want an additional source of examples and study problems. The text does closely correspond to the movies, but the text is not directly required in order to understand the movies, nor is the text directly referenced in the movies.
• With many of the movies you will also find a link to a PDF version of the movie. This might be useful for quick review purposes or to display a word problem found in a movie while at the same time viewing the movie in another window.

The goal of MA 114 is to demonstrate some of the applications of non-calculus mathematical techniques to real-world problems.

Home Access

For home access, you will need a good Internet connection and a recent version of a reliable web browser. Quicktime is available free and you can download it from Apple if your computer does not have it pre-installed.

Help

See the Help and Contacts page for information about help in this class. There is lots of help available. It is your responsibility to keep in touch with the class web site so as to know the help schedule.

The news page should be checked at least three times each week. This is where Dr. Page and Jennifer will post announcements and useful comments. The news page is the only way to stay informed about what is going on in the class.

Homework and Tests

The WebAssignments constitute a large portion of your grade.

All assignments, tests, and final exam are done using WebAssign.

The WebAssignments constitute a large portion of your grade. The homework assignments may be done at home or anywhere you choose. On homework assignments you are allowed up to 50 submissions for each question.

Students are expected to take tests and the final exam on the NCSU campus. This class is offered to students enrolled via distance education (as MA 114 Section 601) and also to regularly enrolled NCSU students (as Section 005 in the spring or Section 006 in the fall). If you are enrolled in Section 005 or 006, you will take your tests in room G108 underneath Harrelson Hall. If you are enrolled in Section 601, you will take your tests and final exam at the DE Proctoring Service in Venture IV on Centennial Campus. The format of the tests will be similar to the WebAssignments used for homework except that you will have limited time (usually 75 minutes) and you will be limited to 3 submissions for each question.

The final exam will have the same format as the tests, will be 135 minutes in length, and will cover the entire course with special emphasis on the final portion which is not covered on Test #3.

Many of the questions on the tests and exam will be very similar to problems you have encountered previously in the WebAssignments.

You should always bring your calculator to tests. All tests are "open book and open notes", so you may also bring along any notes or other printed material that might be useful to you.

The online tools (row operations tool and matrix tool) that are used for your homework may also be used on tests.

Students with Disabilities: Students with disabilities that require special arrangements for assignments or tests should contact me as early as possible in the semester to discuss such arrangements. NCSU has established policies on disabilities.

How to Succeed in this Class

Most of the movies correspond to sections of the text. (Some of the movies, however, are for a special purpose, like teaching you to use the matrix tool, for example.) My suggestion for how to approach the class is that you approach each section of the text in the following order:

1. Watch the movies for that section.
2. If you have a textbook, scan over the corresponding section of the text looking for relevant material or worked examples.
3. Try the WebAssignments that correspond to that section of the text.
4. If there are some problems in the WebAssignment that you can't do, go back and look for something relevant in the movies or textbook.
5. If you're stuck, use the "Ask Jenn" feature of WebAssign (link at bottom of each assignment).
6. See Jennifer during her office hours if you need face-to-face help

Most of the time steps 1-4 will be all that you need. Occasionally you might need to resort to steps 5 and 6.

Your main criteria for whether you're learning what you need to is very simple: If you can do the WebAssignments, you're in good shape. Many of the problems you see on the tests will be very similar to the problems encountered in your daily WebAssignments.

E-Mail

Every NCSU student has a mail account at NCSU called your Unity mail. If your Unity ID is jasmith, then your NCSU e-mail address would be something like jasmith@ncsu.edu or perhaps jasmith7@nscu.edu (if there are other students with a similar name).

NCSU policy is now that all class correspondence should be addressed to students using the NCSU e-mail addresses. So it is essential that you monitor your NCSU mail. Most information for the entire class will be distributed via this web site. And if you write to us, we will reply to whatever address you have listed as your "return address" on your e-mail. But on the rare occasions when we need to e-mail information to the class, your NCSU address will be used, as is now the case for all official university correspondence. At the beginning of the semester before all students have learned about the need to access the web site regularly, we use e-mail to send you preliminary information.

Many people have alternate e-mail that they primarily use. For example, I use Gmail almost exclusively. You can set up your NCSU account so that all mail is automatically forward to your Gmail account or any other account that you routinely use. For information on how to do this, start here.

Academic Integrity

NCSU has established policies regarding academic integrity. In this course either of the following is considered to be a violation of the honor system:

• cheating on tests (i.e. receiving help from another student during the test)
• having someone else submit WebAssignments under your name

Talking with other students about assignments or getting help from other students is fine, as is getting help from Jennifer or me.