1. What's due today? Your Week 2, Chapter 1 Freelance Writer assignments are due tonight by 8 with responses by 11:00. You also have to declare your responses by 11:00 p.m., but that's it: I grade these assignments and will post your grades (and my comments) as soon as I get through all of the assignment. Be sure to pay attention to details here and to the grading rubric at the bottom of the assignment page!
2. What's coming up? Thursday is a busy day! Your Week 2, Chapter 1 Final thoughts are due tomorrow by 11:00 p.m. (more about this below). Your Week 2, Chapter 2 Starting Assumptions are also due by 8 with responses and declaration by 11. AND your Week 2, Chapter 2 reading quiz is due by 11:00. Phew!
3. Extra credit? Your Final Thoughts assignments are a weekly (well, bi-weekly in the summer, I guess...) extra credit opportunity for you to earn up to 2 points extra credit. This involves going back to the Starting Assumptions, Digging Deeper and Freelance Writer assignments and posting a your final thoughts on each assignment. This means answering any questions that your peers might have asked you, summing up what you've learned, and discussing how your classmates helped you in your learning. For more on this, check out the Final Thoughts assignment description.
4. Survey results? Are you interested in the results of the survey you and classmates took during Week 1? You can see the results (all of which are anonymous) in D2L. Click on the Survey link at the top of the page, then click the little bar graph ("Results for Week 1 Survey") to see some information about your classmates!
5. Attachments! Please be certain to post your assignments directly on the discussion board itself instead of posting an attachment. Myself and many of your classmates can't open certain file types.
6. Names! Please check out the "I like to be called...." discussion forum when addressing your peers by name! There are 9 students in this class (almost 40%) that prefer to be called something other than the name that appears in D2L. Please be courteous and use preferred names!
7. Non-substantive responses? For the most part the majority of you are doing a great job with your responses to your classmates. A few of you still haven't quite gotten the hang of things, however. Please be sure that you are adding a new, thoughtful idea to the conversation, not just saying "I agree (or disagree)" or "nice work." Here are a few examples from this week that I thought were excellent (this is not an exhaustive list--many of your responses were awesome and I can't list them all here!):
- I've seen ads for that Diet Rx online too, I'm skeptical though. Most diet pills don't really do anything, I think. Anyway, I liked that you had a large total of subjects, that is good for getting a idea if it will work for a multitude of people. I also like that you took into account the subjects activity level, eating habits previous to the experiment too. Though I wonder if the experiment would be more effective if all your subject were around the same age and fitness level? What if you developed a diet/menu based on the eating habits recorded previous to the experiment. It might give you more control and it would be easier to identify the pill as the sole weight loss factor. People might cheat on their food logs to "please" the researcher or feel motivated with the pill to eat healthier or exercise when they hadn't before? But if the pill does inspire that in the person (to do it themselves) but ingredients of the pill don't actually cause weight loss, do you still think the pill is a failure? Great details in your post, keep it up! [Vianne, Digging Deeper]
- I like the topic you chose. Memory is an important and complex part of the brain, and it would be interesting to know if it can be improved by drugs, especially in so short of a time. My only question about your experiment is, although I understand your reasoning for wanting to put the subjects in a controlled environment, wouldn't changing these people's living environment change the outcome of the experiment? In reality, when a person takes these pills they will be at home, not in a controlled space where they know their behavior is constantly being monitored. I think this environment could cause the observer affect, in which the act of observing changes that which is being observed. [Bekah, Digging Deeper]
- I have seen this product advertised before and wondered about it. When I was in China at the green tea farm our tour guide told us that she lost weight after her pregnancy by drinking green tea one hour after every meal. She insisted that it worked and was probably why the Chinese were so much slimmer than Americans (generally speaking). If she's right and green tea really does increase metabolism, what makes this particular product so much more special? Wouldn't it be interesting to compare the effects of Wu-Long to regular green tea? What kind of tea were you thinking of using for your placebo? [Angelica, Digging Deeper]
Ok, I'm looking forward to reading your Freelance Writer assignments! Let me know if you need anything!!
Heather
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