Course Requirements and Grading Policies for History 122

History 122 is divided into four chronological sections. Your assignments page indicates the dates when each requirement is due.

Course Policies

Because of increased scrutiny of online courses by accrediting agencies, the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), which establishes policy for all community colleges in Virginia, has mandated changes in rules governing distance courses. Accordingly NVCC has modified its policies regarding the grades of "W" (withdrawal) and "I" (incomplete.) Those changes are reflected in the assignment sheet and below.

• Completion of Part 1 of each course, including Short Essay 1 and Quiz 1, constitutes the requirement for avoiding administrative withdrawal.
• At the end of the course, students requesting a course extension must have completed all azssignments through week 14. Extensions will be granted for brief periods—up to a maximum of 2 weeks—as indicated on your semester assignment page. Further extensions will be granted only for exceptional, documented circumstances such as military deployment or prolonged illness.

Quizzes and Essay Exams

1. Short quizzes must be taken during the week indicated on the assignments page. Deadline is Monday of the following week. The quizzes will include brief true-false or multiple choice questions based on Topic Summaries and Documents for the weeks indicated. You may take them at home (or anywhere) without a password but you may only take them once.
2. Essay Exams must be taken at a testing center or at any other proctored location. They will consist of short answer and essay questionsfor the portion of the course indicted on the assignments page. You are given the general essay topics in advance, but nothing may be used during the exam. (Arrangements can be made for testing elsewhere by getting a Proctor Request Form from the ELI Web Site. You will need an exam pass for each exam: Exam Passes are available in Blackboard under Exams. Note that you will also need a picture ID at the testing center.)
3. Exam and quiz links will be placed in Exams in Blackboard when they are available.

Practice quizzes and practice exams with guidelines will be posted well before each quiz and exam. I do not grade practice quizzes: thus they do not count toward your grade. You may take them as often as you like or print them for study purposes. Questions will be similar to those on the regular tests and will cover the same general material. Practice quiz questions may or may not appear on the real exam, and there will be other questions on the same material that are not on the practice quiz. Forum questions will suggest the kind of essay you may encounter on exams. There are no essay questions on quizzes, and no objective questions on the Essay Exams.

General Writing Instructions

History 122 requires 2 short (3-5 page) essays, one film critique and one site visit essay. Your site visit essay is a modified research paper, modified to the extent that you may use materials provided on this web site for your sources. You must visit an actual, physical site—virtual visits do not meet the requirement. See Writing Instructions.

Extra Credit

A discussion forum is available in Blackboard for extra credit. Regular participation is required. Points will be assigned at the discretion of the instructor at the end of the course based upon quality of participation. Maximum extra credit: 50 points.