Professor:
Office:
e-mail:
Office hours:

TA:

Textbooks:

Nancy Darling
113 C South Henderson
ndarling@psu.edu (This is the best way to get hold of me.)
Monday, 2:15-3:15 in my office. Or talk to me before or after class. 

Amanda Mignot (asm137@psu.edu)

• Adolescence (6th Edition) by Laurence Steinberg
• Adolescent Behavior by Elizabeth Arie

Format and Goals:

This course has five primary goals:

• to learn the factual information that is the basis of our scientific understanding of adolescent development;
• to get a better grasp on the variability of adolescent experiences in the United States;
• to develop the ability to communicate what you know clearly and accurately;
• to encourage you to use empirical sources to support your arguments effectively;
• to encourage you to work with other students in the class to improve your understanding of the material.

Course Requirements:

It is your responsibility to attend all classes and learn material presented during lectures, class discussions, and in assigned readings. Reading assignments should be completed before class on the dates indicated on the syllabus. I assume that all students in the class will have read the assigned materials before I begin lecturing on a topic. However, we are going to be covering a lot of ground, and you will (hopefully!) encounter many ideas, findings, and concepts that are new to you. If you become confused, or feel like I'm expecting you to understand a concept that I haven't introduced yet, PLEASE STOP ME AND ASK ME TO EXPLAIN! If you don't feel comfortable asking during class, drop by my office, send me or Amanda an e-mail, or ask me after class. Remember, if you don't understand the material, other people in the class probably don't either, and they will be really grateful to you for asking.

Evaluation:

There are three major criteria on which you will be evaluated: your performance on the weekly on-line quizzes, exams and participation in the on-line seminar. 

Weekly On-Line Quizzes:  In order to encourage on-going reading of the text and mastery of the course content, you will take weekly, on-line quizzes.  Quizzes are open-book and are administered through the Angel course management system. The 13 on-line quizzes contribute 25% to your final grade.

How do the quizzes work? 

• Log on to the Angel website (http://cms.psu.edu), click on My Classes, and go to our class page.
• Click on the Lessons tab. You should see a list of assignments, including the on-line quizzes. Choose the quiz you want to take. 
• You can take quizzes as soon as they are posted, but must complete the process by midnight on the dates listed on the syllabus.
• All quizzes are open book. 
• You may work with a friend, but each of you must take the quiz individually.
• The quizzes are multiple choice and each has about 10 questions.
• How are you graded?
• To receive credit for successfully passing the quiz, you must receive a 90 or better. 
• You can retake each quiz until you receive a 90. 
• Your grade is calculated by averaging your scores for all your quiz attempts. 
• If you take the test once and get a 90, you will receive a 90 for that week's quiz
• If you take the test twice and get a 50 and a 100, you will receive a 75 for that week's quiz
• If you don't take a quiz or you take a quiz and do not receive a 90 or better, you will receive a 0 for that week.
• What if you get sick?
• You are allowed to take ONE quiz late - no questions asked.  All other late quiz grades will be entered as 0's. 
• What if I try to take the test at 11:30 PM on the day it is due, but the servers is down and won't let me on?
  • You are allowed to take ONE quiz late - no questions asked.  All other late quiz grades will be entered as 0's. Sorry.

Exams: Content mastery of the material presented in this course will be evaluated with three multiple choice exams. The first two are given during the semester, the last one is cumulative and will be given during the final exam period. Check the course schedule for the dates of these exams. Exam performance will constitute 50% of your final grade.

On-line Seminars: This course is designed to meet the University General Education requirements for the social sciences. Three goals of those requirements are to (a) encourage active discussion between students, (b) encourage extensive writing, and (c) encourage the appropriate use of reference materials. In this course, those requirements will be met through your participation in on-line discussion groups. 

What is an on-line seminar and what do I have to do? At the beginning of the semester, each student in the class will be assigned to an on-line discussion group. You will work with the other students in that discussion group throughout the course. There will be about 20 students in each group - small enough to get to know one another, but large enough to reflect a diversity of viewpoints and level of expertise. If you think of the class as a learning community, you might think of your discussion group as your neighborhood within that community. 

One of the things that can help a neighborhood coalesce is a central meeting place. This might be a street corner, a small store, a park, or a neighborhood bar. Your meeting place is an on-line threaded discussion space. Over the semester, you and your 'neighbors' will get together to discuss assigned readings from Adolescent Behavior. These discussions will take place on-line. When you check into your assigned meeting place, you will find a series of topics that I hope you will address. You can also introduce topics of your own. The discussions will be asynchronous - in other words, you and your neighbors may check out and respond to the topics at different times. Each discussion topic will be explored over the course of several days. You will be graded on the quality of your participation.

Brass tacks: In concrete terms, what does this mean? It means that over the course of the semester you will read a series of assigned articles in the book Adolescent Behavior. You will log onto the Lessons area of the class website and into the specific area assigned to your group for class discussion. You will find an introduction to a discussion topic related to the assigned article, some background information, and an assignment. For example, you might find a series of questions that ask you to analyze the reading and think about its implications. There are four assignments over the semester, plus a practice exercise. You will post answers responding to the questions and to what other students in the class have written. You can also raise issues of your own that you'd like to discuss. At a certain date, formal discussion will end. You will be graded on what you have written in response to the assignment (0 if you didn't participate, 1 point for minimal participation, 2 points for satisfactory participation, 3 points for exceptionally good participation). To get credit for participation, you must have posted by midnight on the dates indicated on the syllabus or the webpage (in case of conflict the webpage dates take precedence).

The very best way to improve your grade in this class: The on-line seminar is worth 25% of your grade. This means that each assignment is worth a little more than 6% of your grade. The easiest way to improve your course grade is to do an excellent job on the on-line seminar. It is quality, not quantity that counts. Remember, this is a forum for exploring ideas. Although you are welcome to share your feelings as well, the goal of this seminar - like the goal of regular seminars - is the exchange of intellectual ideas. That is what you will be graded on.  In order to give you time to do this, we do not meet as a class on the dates on-line seminars are due. At an absolute minimum, you should expect to put that time into your posting.

Extra credit: One goal of the course is to encourage you to use the library to expand your understanding of the material and to help form your opinions. Every time we have an on-line discussion, there will be opportunities to contribute substantively to the discussions by introducing information you have found in the library. Posting properly cited information will earn you one point of extra credit that will be added to the final average of your exam grades. You may only earn 1 point per discussion topic. Concretely, what does this mean? It means that if at the end of the semester you have an 79 average on the exams, but you earned 4 points in extra credit, your exam grades will be calculated as an 83. This is a great deal! In the example, it just moved you from a C+ to a B. If you have trouble with multiple-choice exams, this is an excellent way of improving your grade. In addition, over the last several semesters, it has become clear that integrating the library material into your posting also tends to move posting grades from the 2 (satisfactory) to 3 (excellent) category. 

You can also earn extra credit by posting early and often.  If you make an initial posting two days before the posting is due (Wednesday at midnight, if your posting is due by Friday at midnight), then post again AT LEAST 24 HOURS LATER and comment on someone else's post, you will receive an extra credit point that will be applied to your on-line seminar grade.

Student Editorial Board: Students who are interested will be given the opportunity to join the Editorial Board for the Adolescence: Change & Continuity website. This website was written by Penn State students taking HDFS 239 and 433, and is listed as an important resource for undergraduate students by websites and textbooks across the country. Human resource offices, schools, and social service agencies use this website as a resource for their clients and several of the student essays on this site have been published in newsletters. 

We are looking for students interested in working to improve the overall quality of information this site provides by becoming members of the Editorial Board. Students who participate in the Editorial Board will work together to evaluate the existing website, write introductory materials for each topical area, edit existing material, and suggest new topics to be explored. If you already know HTML programming, or are interested in learning, you can work on this aspect of the site as well. All participating students will be listed on the website as Editorial Board members. Students who take advantage of this option have the option of skipping the final exam.

Missed Exams, postings, and absences:

Because it is extremely difficult to evaluate the validity of excuses for missing a class, the general policy will be to permit NO MAKEUP EXAMS. Please notify Amanda as soon as it is apparent that an exam will be missed (e-mail is probably the easiest way to do this). Failure to notify Amanda promptly may result in a 0 averaged into your final grade. If you miss an exam and have properly notified Amanda, your final exam score will be substituted in for the missed exam score. In other words, if you miss one exam, your final will count twice as much. Students missing two exams will receive an automatic 0 on both missed exams. 

ALL WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS ARE DUE BY MIDNIGHT ON THE DAY INDICATED ON THE SYLLABUS. Long lines in the computer center or crashed servers are not legitimate excuses for a late posting, so PLAN YOUR TIME ACCORDINGLY! It is unfair to classmates who push themselves to complete their work by the due date for you to turn your assignment in late. Everyone could do a better job given a little more time. All late postings will be dropped 1 point the first day and will not be accepted more than two days late. If you know your posting will be late, you are responsible for informing me on or before the date it is due. Failure to do so may result in refusal to accept late work. Students posting late will not be allowed to submit extra credit.

A note on academic integrity:

One important skill that you need to develop is the ability to distinguish between your own ideas and those of other people. Although most obvious in cases where text is copied word for word, plagiarism also includes copying ideas or arguments from one source and presenting them as your own. Plagiarism can involve as little as copying a key phrase or sentence without acknowledging the source. It is easy to avoid. Use quotation marks to indicate direct quotes. If you are presenting an idea or an argument that you read somewhere else, give the person who first developed the idea credit for it. Remember, when in doubt, cite. 

Cheating and plagiarism are very serious offenses governed by the student code of conduct (see Senate Regulation 49-20). Anyone cheating on an exam or copying work from another source without proper acknowledgment will receive an F in this class and will be referred to the University Judicial System for further action.