The syllabus

The syllabus is now available:

Chem 1210 Syllabus – Dr. Kroner – Autumn 2016

Please read it over if you wish. I have prepared a podcast reviewing the syllabus page-by-page:

A few summaries from this podcast about the syllabus:

• You can attend office hours anytime you wish – no appointment is needed.
• E-mail is the best way to get ahold of me outside office hours.
• This class has about 350 total students, so effective lines of communication must be made. Between this blog, my email, and office hours, I hope you can find a way or several ways to get information when you need it. There is also a Learning Resource Center, which is where all of our 150+ general chemistry TAs hold their office hours. You can see any TA anytime you wish during the open hours of 8am-5pm Monday-Friday. The center is least attended early morning and later afternoons.
• You must attend your first lab session if you want to keep your seat in the course. You can save your seat by immediately emailing the address on the bottom of page one if you must miss the first lab session. Labs will meet starting Tuesday morning of the first week!
• Labs are all in Celeste Lab. Chem 1210 labs are on the second and third floors.
• Exams comprise over 2/3 of your final grade. Think of study plans that allow you to score high on exams. More on study ideas later.
• Recitations are the 55 minute “lab” meeting on your schedule. These will be problem-solving sessions with a group of about 25 students and a teaching assistant in a small classroom. You only need to bring a calculator and a pen/pencil to these sessions. You can miss up to three of the 13 graded sessions with no penalty. Recitations will begin to be held beginning Tuesday morning of the first week of class.
• Labs are the 2 hour-55 minute “lab” meeting on your schedule. You will meet with the same small group of 25 students as recitation in a laboratory. The first lab (called Lab zero) should get you squared away on all the lab policies and procedures. You can show up to the first lab with nothing but a pen (pen is required in lab), but your lab manual and notebook would be helpful if you had them already. You will receive a lab syllabus and (if needed) a copy of lab zero if you don’t have your lab manual yet at the first lab meeting in the first week of class.
• Letter grades in the course (and all general chemistry courses at OSU) are set based upon the overall course average for the sake of making all of our chemistry classes consistent in how grades are set. One guarantee is made though that anyone scoring 90% or better overall in the course will receive at least an A- grade. The overall course average will be set in the C+ range despite wherever this average score is. Whether our average is set to a high C+ or a low C+ score will ultimately be determined based upon how well our course does on the ACS standardized first semester final exam compared the other Chem 1210 sections. Our grades though will be set independent of the other lecture sections of this course.
• Academic misconduct is taken very seriously at Ohio State. Any case of suspected violations of the student code of conduct must be referred to the Committee on Academic Misconduct (COAM). To help avoid these situations, there is a page in the syllabus on some common scenarios to be aware of and an associated quiz is required to be taken and completed with a 100% on Carmen by Friday, Sept 2 or else you will not be able to pass this course. You can attempt this quiz as many times as you wish and only your highest score counts.
• Exams are multiple-choice and they will be held in lecture on Fridays as noted in the syllabus. Wednesdays prior to lecture will be reviews of the material for the exam. A lecture-by-lecture coverage schedule, exam coverage schedule, and homework schedule plus homework grading guidelines and homework strategies will be the topic of the next blog/podcast post.
• High school chemistry (or a related course) is a prerequisite for this course. I will post a blog/podcast on review topics. Hopefully these topics sound familiar and you can build upon them in this course. If you find these topics to be unfamiliar, you might want to reconsider finding an intervention, like the Sapling Precourse, and you might consider frequently coming to office hours.

Please feel free to comment with any questions you might have about this post or the syllabus. Continue emailing me any general questions you might have too!