X-hours will be used as needed to make up missed classes or catch up on material.  You will informed at least two days in advance of the use of an X-hour, but in general you should keep this hour open in your schedule.

By the end of this course students will:

• See and appreciate calculus in their everyday lives.
• Successfully communicate mathematical knowledge through writing and speaking.
• Appreciate mathematics as a growing and changing field.
• Value peer collaboration and group learning while continuing to maintain a sense of self-motivation and personal understanding.
• Be ready to go on to Math 13:
• Understand various techniques of integration, how and why they work, and when they can be applied,
• Know the different tests for convergence and divergence of sequences and series, when to apply them, as well as the reasons we study infinite series.
• Be comfortable working with functions of multiple variables, understand different coordinate systems for 3-dimensional space, and be able to use differential calculus techniques to solve problems

A student enrolled in Math 8 should have successfully completed one of the following: Math 3, Math 1 and 2, or an AB calculus curriculum.

Math 8 moves quickly, so it is essential that your algebra and trig (precalculus) be in good working order, along with your differential calculus (taking and interpreting derivatives).

Text and Resources

Teaching Methods

Below is a description of how we “run” our classrooms. This is provided to you so that you know what to expect, and you understand why we do the things we do.

We have a lot of material to cover in this course, and the only way we see to get through it all is if we spend most classes at board “lecturing.” This does not mean you can sit back, relax, and blindly write down everything that we do. We’ll ask you questions and expect you to answer. “I don’t know,” is an acceptable answer. You should feel free to stop lecture and ask a question. We may ask a student to explain a concept to the class. Hearing an explanation from a peer can sometimes be much more meaningful than hearing it from me or reading it in a book.

Expectations

What you can expect from your instructors:

• We will change the plan for the course. Our job is to teach you calculus. If you aren’t learning the best that you can, something needs to change, and it will. Expect in-class and BlackBoard anonymous surveys of your thoughts on the course, and to see incremental changes in the course based on these surveys.
• We understand that calculus is a difficult subject to master. We will be patient with you through your struggles, and give you your fair share of time with us to work through and overcome your obstacles.
• You can expect timely, yet not immediate, feedback on your work and course standing. This means you can expect graded homework returned on Monday, exams returned within a week at the latest, but you will not receive an answer to a “Can I turn in my homework during office hours after class?”- email that you send at 3am.
• Expect to be treated as others are treated: if everyone else turns in a quiz after 10 minutes, it isn’t fair to give you 12 minutes.

What you can expect your TA:

• You can expect Scott to be familiar with your current assignment and the course material, but not necessarily ready to answer your questions with a perfectly phrased concise statement… it should be a discussion.
• Scott is NOT your personal tutor. He is there to answer general questions, help you complete your homework successfully and assist you in preparation for your exams. He is also not a solutions manual that happens to look like a person.
• Tutorial is from 7-9 on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday evenings. Scott will be there during those times, or have arranged for another TA to be there. He will not have office hours, nor will he be expected to stay late after tutorial.

What we expect from you:

• Each assignment has a due date or stop time, and you are expected to have them turned in by that time, unless prior arrangements have been made.
• Respectful participation in class: listening, asking questions, answering questions, not checking email or Facebook, not doing an assignment for another class, etc.
• Feedback and the effort to make this class your own. 

Grading

(10%) WEBWORK
There will be daily WeBWork assignments. Each WeBWork assignment will be open immediately following the corresponding lesson in class, and due before the start of the next class. The WeBWork assignments are meant to check if you are understand the basic definitions, theorems and techniques of the lesson.

You can log in to WeWork here.  Assignment 0 will remain posted all term with the answers available and is designed to be an introduction to the WebWork system.  If have not used Webwork before, go through Assignment 0.  For information on the WebWork

(15%) HOMEWORK
The weekly written assignments will be available on BlackBoard on Monday mornings and will be turned in Friday at the beginning of class. While these assignments may contain challenging mathematical concepts, your focus should be in the presentation of the solution. These write-ups will be returned to you on the following Monday with a credit or no credit score. You will be given chances to rewrite your assignment and turn it in on Wednesday. For the first three assignments, you will have as many rewrites as you need, the next three assignments you’ll have only one chance to rewrite, and the final four should be nearly perfect when you turn them in on Friday, no rewrites. Thus, you should be learning from your mistakes, taking in and absorbing the feedback we give you, not just blindly making the suggested changes.

(15%) QUIZZES
Quizzes will be given at the beginning of class each Monday. The purpose of these quizzes is to keep everyone up to speed in the course. The difficulty of the questions asked will be somewhere between a warm-up question and a WebWork problem. The quiz will happen at the beginning of class, take no more than 10 minutes, and will not be given at any other time unless arrangements are made before Monday. If you have been keeping up with the reading and homework and attending class regularly, you should have no problem getting 95-100% on every quiz. Everyone has bad days, thus your lowest quiz score will be dropped from your total.

(60%) EXAMS
There will be two exams given during the term, and one cumulative final exam at the end. Because the final is cumulative, if your score on the final exam is higher than both of the other exams, your exam score will be completely based on the final. The point is to learn the material by the end of the term, so if you show you’ve mastered the material, the stops and starts of your learning process should not matter. Otherwise, 30% of your grade will be from the final exam and 15% from each midterm exam. There is more information on exam philosophy, what to expect, and how to prepare on the Blackboard site under EXAMS.

FINAL GRADES
To assign final letter grades, the instructors will plot the point totals of all the students in both sections and assign grades based on clustering and averages. Although this is somewhat “curved” you will not receive any letter grade lower than the standard percentage grade assignments allows, i.e. if you earn 90% of all possible points the lowest grade you can be assigned will be an A-. A grading spreadsheet is available on Blackboard, and the mean and median scores for quizzes and exams will always be made available to you. While this doesn’t guarantee you’ll know your exact standing in the course or “What you need to get on the final to get a B+ in the class,” you should be able to keep relatively good tabs on your status.

Academic Honor Code

On Exams and Quizzes: No help given or received. All exams and quizzes will be closed book. No calculators or computers are allowed.

On Homework: Students are encouraged to work together to do homework problems. What is important is the student’s eventual understanding of homework ideas, and not how that is achieved. The Honor Code applies to homework in the following way. What a student turns in as a homework solution is to be his or her own understanding of how to do the problem, and his or her own explanation of the solution. Students must state what sources they have consulted, with whom they have collaborated, and from whom they have received help. The solutions you submit must be written by you alone. Any copying (electronic or otherwise) of another person’s solutions, in whole or part, is a violation of the Honor Code.

If you have any questions as to whether some action would be acceptable under the Academic Honor Code, please speak to your instructor. This is definitely a situation in which it is better to ask permission than forgiveness.

Academic Resources

Students with disabilities enrolled in this course and who may need disability-related classroom accommodations are encouraged to make and appointment to see their instructor before the end of the second week of the term. All discussions will remain confidential, although the Student Accessibility Services office may be consulted to discuss appropriate implementation of any accommodation requested.

Whether or not you have a disability, the Academic Skills Center is an excellent place to visit. Take some time to look at their videos and other resources. Would you benefit from some of the planning tools? Do you think you could improve your note-taking skills? Is stress eating your life? You're the only one who knows what might benefit you, and it doesn't hurt to look.