4. It’s YOUR education, OWN IT!
“It’s easy to dodge our
responsibilities,
but we cannot dodge the
consequences of dodging our
responsibilities.”
-Josiah Charles Stamp
10. Timing Grading Scale
TIMED WRITING GRADING SCALE
The following scale is used for grading:
Errors Points
0 +5
1 +4
2 +3
3 +2
4 +1
5 +0
EXAMPLE: Timed writing of 30 gwam with 0 errors.
30 gwam + Accuracy points (5) = 35
GROSS WORDS A MINUTE PERCENTAGE GRADE
50+ 100 A
49 98 A
48 96 A
47 94 A
46 92 A
45 90 A
44 89 B
43 87 B
42 85 B
41 82 B
40 80 B
39 79 C
38 77 C
37 75 C
36 72 C
35 70 C
34 69 D
33 67 D
32 65 D
31 62 D
30 60 D
11. Coursework
Skillbuilding
Production Documents
13. Let’s get started!
This week you should do the following:
Establish 2 way communication with me
Read the instructions for setting up Keyboarding
Pro
Read Syllabus
Note assignment due dates on your personal
calendar
Editor's Notes
Welcome to BUS 1440 online. This is a course that will improve your keyboarding skills that will be important to you in practically any career you choose. I am going to review your Syllabus with you today and give you some advise for the semester. There are other videos for you to use when installing your keyboarding pro software. You will want to be sure you check those out too.
Before we start let me introduce myself. I am married and the mother of 2 great kids. I have a son that is 8 and a daughter that will be 13 next week. My husband works in Human Resources at Aflac, in their Columbia, SC office. I have worked at CTC for 10 years now both online and on campus. Now that we live in SC, I will obviously not be on campus. This distance will allow you to experience all that online learning is without reverting to what is familiar – face to face meetings. I am passionate about online learning. I feel there is nothing that can’t be taught online with the right tools. Speaking of online learning, I am currently working on my Master’s Degree in Instructional Design for E Learning through the University of Colorado. I work from my home and go to school at home. Therefore it is much easier for you to email me or call me if you have a question.
I am not a mind reader. I cannot see you. I can’t look out into our classroom and see your confused faces or I can’t see you pounding your computer with your fists. You have to tell me. Do not spend hours being frustrated and not being able to figure something out. I am happy to set up a meeting online using Elluminate or Skype, I can share my desktop with you, use a webcam, or talk you through any questions you have. If you have questions, start with an email to me that states what your question is. For example, it only delays the process of getting help when I receive an email that says, “I’m so confused, please help.” While I am happy to help, I need a little more information. What specifically is confusing you, Angel, Keyboarding Pro, the Syllabus, logging in to email, it could be anything. Please state your problem or if it is hard to explain, just give me a call. I have very little patience for the person that is failing the course and during the last week of the class they tell me they never understood how to get started.
It is going to be your name on the degree, your name on the desk / office door someday. You need to take responsibility for it now to earn it. Speaking of earning your degree, we will go ahead and jump into part of the Syllabus. You could easily cheat in my course. I am not naive to that. But you are only cheating yourself and 90% of the time I can tell. And I will report all suspected cases of Academic Dishonesty. The penalty at CTC is severe and honestly, it isn’t worth the effort. I will work with you all day long if I know you are trying. If you are expecting something for nothing, that is what you will get. Not just from this course but in life.
You have obviously figured out how to login to Angel and find our course, good job! Now let me show you the areas we will use most in our course. This is the first screen you should see after logging into our course. You should always note a few things on this page before moving on. Always look to see if you have any email from me or other students, or if there are new announcements. You will also see that I have put our course calendar on this page. This is important for you to keep up with assignments. Mark these dates on your calendar now so that you will not find yourself behind on work.
Under the Lessons tab you will find the “guts” of the course. You will find here Weekly folders for every week of the semester. You will need to look at these folders each week to keep up with assignments. You will find PowerPoint presentations for each module, an explanation of that week’s assignments and the assessments in each week’s folder. You will also find the Final exams and other information in this area.
The first folder, Start Here is where we need to begin. Let’s look at the contents of this folder first. There is a link to open our Syllabus and Assignment schedule. I highly recommend that you not only read these documents but print them (and like I said before, note the due dates on your calendar). Then you will see the week 1 assignments. This week is a tough week because you are still getting used to the set up of the course, purchasing materials and getting started. I understand if this causes you to find yourself behind. This is why there are 2 pages with week 1 assignments. The first page, should be done first. The first thing to do is to confirm you have read my emails, seen this orientation and that you can successfully email me (do this by simply sending me an email). Then it tells you to complete the Email Syllabus Quiz and get your software set up. You should be able to get at least the email verification and the Email Syllabus Quiz done this week. I realize many of you have to wait on Financial Aid to get your software set up. While I understand this, we still need to get started. Please know that it is ok for you to be late on your work if you are in this position, but it doesn’t mean that you won’t have to catch up. If you anticipate it will be awhile before you can purchase the software, I recommend setting up your Keyboarding Pro account using one of the computers on campus and then when you are able purchase it and set it up at home, I can give you instructions for doing this. (there are instructions posted in Angel, Lessons, Start Here for setting up your account either on campus or at home). The next page has additional Week 1 Assignments. These are due this week, but I understand that many of you may have to turn them in next week. I need you to understand that you will be behind on your work though and that this material is still due. We will review your assignments and how this work is to be done in a minute. You will also see there are instructions for setting up your account posted in the Start Here folder. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! You need to read this document and you must enter the class code posted here to create your user account. If you do not, you will be able to login the KBP and do work, but it won’t be recorded in our course. It must be done this way for me to receive your work and grade it. Lastly, you will see the PowerPoint for the Module 3 in your text. These PowerPoints are in each week’s folder.Let’s review the Syllabus and then we will discuss how the assignments work.
My phone number is listed on your syllabus. Please keep in mind, that I may not answer your call due to being away from my phone or simply unable to answer. But if you don’t leave a message, I can’t call you back to help you. Please leave messages if you call, or send me an email with your question. You should plan to spend 8-10 hours per week on classwork. This may be more or less depending on your skill level, but this is a guide. It is not required that you spend this time, but to complete all the work and lessons, it would take this long for most. You are required to USE Keyboarding Pro Deluxe version 2 and Microsoft Word for this course. If you do not have Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 on your computer, you cannot use Keyboarding Pro Deluxe. If you do not have this software, or do not want to purchase the software, you can use the labs on campus to complete your work (just make sure you set up your user account correctly using the instructions posted in Lessons, Start Here). You will also need the textbook. The software and text are sold in a bundle at the CTC Store and it is a much better value to purchase this bundle than to try and find a used book, simply because the software is essentially free with the purchase of the book. If you find a cheap book, you will pay a higher price for the software alone. Proctoring – this is always a confusing issue for students. In an attempt to keep students honest in online courses, CTC requires that your final exam be proctored. A proctor is simply an approved person that watches you take the exam, verifies that you are who you say you are and that you don’t use unapproved materials on the exam. There is a list of who you can use for a proctor and how to set this up. It is important that you do this well before the final is due. It is not something that can be done the day before the test. Put it on your calendar several weeks before the exam to make sure you have it done. You can set it up for a time that is convenient for you, but you need to set it up and get it approved. We will discuss this more as it gets closer.You will see on the Syllabus the breakdown of how your grades are weighted and the different types of assignments you have. The grades that you see in KBP are not necessarily the grade you will receive. I manually grade your work and post the grades in Angel. Pay no attention to the grading in KBP other than to use it as a guide to correct errors. You see that you have the final exam and timing test that is 20% of your grade (see why it is so important to make sure you have this set up and are ready for this??). You also have skillbuilding assignments worth 20%. These are done in Keyboarding Pro. We will discuss in more detail on the next page. The Production Documents that you will complete in Word are worth 20% as well and your Timed Writings are done in KBP and worth 30% of your over all grade. The syllabus also gives you an explanation of the grading for Timed Writings, let’s go over this…
To pass the course you must have at least 3 different timed writings done in Keyboarding Pro, they all have to be at least 5 minutes long, with less than 5 errors and at least 30 words per minute. This is worth 30% of your grade! You should be working on timings everytime you login to KBP. I’d suggest doing a timing everytime you open the program. To do this, click the Timings tab in KBP and set it to 5 minutes, then click a timing on the list to the right, then OK. The next page will tell you where to find the text in your book. It doesn’t matter which timings you do, as long as you have 3 different ones. I’d start with #1 and just keep doing it until I met the requirements, then move onto #2, etc. But you can do any timing you like, just remember it has to be 5 minutes to be graded. You will do shorter timings as part of the Skillbuilding, but these are not graded. KBP does not notify me when you have sent work to the server, so I recommend that if you have achieved these requirements on a timing, please shoot me a quick email so that I can go into KBP and grade it. Now let’s look at the grading scale for timings.
Ok, so let’s go over how these timings are graded. Remember they have to be five minutes each. Look at the bottom of this chart, you will see that if you achieve 30 wpm, that equates to a 60%. But then you need to look at how many errors you have. At the top you will see the scale for the errors. So if you have a 30 wpm timing with 5 errors, that gives you 0 points, so that would be a 60%. But if you have 30 wpm with 0 errors, that would give you 5 points changing your wpm to 35. So they are like bonus points if you have fewer errors. So with a 35 score, you would get a 70%. There are only 3 timings recorded in the grade book and I will replace your lower scores with higher scores as you are able to increase your grades.
As you look at the assignment schedule, you will see there are different things due each week. The items listed in BOLD are graded and will be put in the Angel gradebook. All of the other things listed are for your benefit and will prepare you for this graded work. For example, this week under additional assignments, you see: “Work through lessons 26-27 in your textbook.” This is not all graded. You should work through the lessons using your book and Keyboarding Pro. Specifically, click Lessons in KBP, type the lesson number in the box and click GO. Then click Select Activity on the right and start at the top working your way down. Then you see that there are some bold items – these things will be recorded grades. They are “Lesson 26, Drills 1,2, and 3 and Lesson 27 Drill 2” If you are working through ten entire lesson you will do these, but if you are rushed for time, or if the material is a review for you, you can skip the other things and go directly to these graded items. Once you do the work in KBP and close, click yes when asked if you want to send your work to the web server. I will grade the assignments from there. These are considered Skillbuilding assignments and the Skillbuilding assignments are not graded for accuracy, only completion (obviously, you will still want to work on your accuracy, but I don’t have time to manually grade each of them). In future weeks you will see Module Theory tests in bold. These are multiple choice tests on each of the text Modules taken in Angel. By working through the lessons, you will be prepared for these tests. You will find a link to the tests in the corresponding weekly folder in Angel’s Lessons area. You will also see Production Documents in bold on the Assignment Schedule. The instructions for these are posted in the weekly folders. These are new to our course this semester, so if you have talked to students in previous courses, they will not know about this and will confuse you Let me explain the my theory and the procedure for these.
The production documents will ask you to create a document and think it through from the start to finish. I do this for 2 reasons; 1, to prepare you for the workforce more fully. And 2, to keep you honest. There is an explanation of my theory at the top of the instructions, it says: It is important to me that you are able create documents as you would in a “real-world” setting rather than just completing the work in the book for a grade. Therefore, the Production Documents that you will create in BUSN 1440 are documents you will create based on the instructions I give you, but they require more thought than just keying the text given. You will be graded on the proper formatting (based upon what you are learning in the Skillbuilding work in Keyboarding Pro and your textbook), as well as on your writing ability. Imagine yourself in a professional environment; you would not send documents to your boss with improper grammar, misspellings, “text” language or that didn’t make sense, would you? No, of course you wouldn’t. The same should be the case for these documents. Think through what you need to convey and how to layout the document, then create the document, and don’t forget to read back over your work – not just proofing for errors, but make sure that your document makes sense.So to do this, you will read through the instructions and start with a blank Word document. Let’s look at your first document that is due in Week 4 to get a more clear understanding. Using the instructions and what you have learned in the Skillbuilding assignments, you will write a paragraph introducing yourself to me. You will see on the instructions a rubric for what I am looking for when grading the work. I want to you to think for yourself and write in complete sentences with a professional tone as you would in the workplace. Once you have completed the document using the instructions, save the work as a Word document and submit through the dropbox in the weekly folder in Angel.
As always, please let me know if you have questions. I look forward to a great course!
