On Thursday, we will reserve the last 10 minutes of class for the standard college course evaluation. You will have an opportunity to rate the course, instruction, etc.

In addition, this course was part of a grant. Development of certain aspects of the course, webwork for example, received funding from the grant. As part of the evaluation of the grant, we ask that you do an online survey. If we have time on Tuesday next week at the end of class, I may have you do it using your phones. Those who have already done it may be allowed to leave early. There is a lot of legalese that you have agree to, but be assured that I will never have access to any of the individual responses and even the overall responses will be kept from me until the grades have been submitted.

The final unit is a bit convoluted in that there is an intertwining of exponential and logarithmic topics. Here’s a table which shows how the various remaining components of the course will be treated:

All the videos are posted and the webwork will get opened up a bit early in case you want to work on the topics before they are covered in class.

Hopefully, you have settled in a bit, which means in particular that you have carved out enough study time for the course, say 4-8 hours depending on how much math you already know and your math abilities. I would suggest devoting part of that time to reading the material in a text (if you do not have the official text, I have added to the syllabus page links to some alternatives). Of course you should also watch the videos  and try to answer the questions. This should be done on looseleaf as I will at times collect it. [WAC (writing across the curriculum) suggests that every course at City Tech, including math courses, have some writing.]

Make sure you get to the webwork problem sets. A whole bunch of them are due by classtime tomorrow (Tuesday 2/7). This is supposed to be review material, so for most of you, should be pretty easy. The pace of the webwork will abruptly lessen as we begin the “new” material. A more careful treatment will happen in class. I put “new” in quotes as for some of you, most of the algebra will be review. So far everyone who has asked for help in webwork has done so thru email. I encourage you to use the help system available thru the openlab (click on the link within the webwork interface). You need to become a member of the openlab to use this so please so by Thursday.  During class on Thursday, I will send those who fail to this to the New Student Center. Beginning on Thursday, I will ask students who give me questions I get via email to use this service instead. I will make exceptions if you have not got gotten a city email account because you are a new student.

As mentioned in the syllabus, tutoring is available in the atrium learning center. The math department hires advanced undergraduate math majors to provide tutoring in the midway building. The hours are shorter than in the atrium, but you might find it less crowded and more intimate.

Over the course of the semester, you are required to make 2 posts and to make one “comment” (see syllabus for details) on someone else’s post. Your posts will automatically be placed on this “home” page. You will have to respond to another student’s “comment” by editing your second post. Finally, you will make a comment on your first post at the end of the semester.

The course will require considerable work outside of class. Each day before class, you are required to watch one or more videos and to answer questions about what you view. You will submit your answers at the beginning of class. In addition, you should take notes and bring your own questions to class. There may be very little “lecture” in class. Instead, most of the time will be taken up by presentations of homework solutions by students as well as discussion of some of the underlying concepts. Homework is to be done in the 2 days that follows a session. It is due before the next class and a daily quiz will be given based on the homework from the previous session.