1. One of the things that you absolutely have to know how to do in an online class is how to hand things in. Sounds kind of silly, but I will never be accepting paper from you in any format whatsoever. So we'd better get this one correct together. So what exactly do I mean by "handing things in"? Well, most of the time this includes uploading an attachment either to an assignment section, or occasionally to a discussion board or an email. So how exactly do you do this? Well, let's start first with the assignment. Now you can do this either in windows or mac, I just want you to find your notes or notepad program. Open that program up (not word, or any fancy word processor), and simply write me a short story about your day, about 5 sentences long. Make sure it's clean, clear, appropriate, and that others can easily read it and comment on it.
   Now, the next step is crucial because I find this is where most people go wrong. When you are working on documents on your computer that you need to access quickly and easily, I find it is best to work on these documents on the desktop, even if you later move them to different place. If you're not used to doing this, the best way to do it is to go to the "file" command and then choose "save as...", and make sure you set the location you're saving to as the desktop. In this way you'll always know where the most current file you're working on is. It's also helpful if you're doing this on school computers because you really don't want to get caught losing your files in the bowels of whatever folder the computer asks you to save things in. Trust me! Now, when you go into the assignment to hand things in, you get two choices - you can write the submission right there, or you can hand in a file. NEVER WRITE THE SUBMISSION RIGHT THERE! Never rely on Blackboard to stay stable enough for you to type anything in a box for more than 2 minutes. This is not to say that you cannot also copy and paste the content of your file into the written submission box. In fact, I encourage you to do that any time you can - it serves as both a backup for your file and an easy way for your professor to see at a glance what you've handed in.
   So, in the assignment submission section (#2), make sure you attach a file by browsing your computer (remember how you left that file on the desktop?) and copy/paste the text from that file into the text submission box. Finally, there's also a section there called "Add Comments". In this section please make a comment to me of some sort so that I know you understand how to use all three sections of the submission page. Finally, once this is all done you can hit "Submit" and let 'er rip.  For a small file it may be a blip or time for it to upload into the system, for a larger one it may take longer, but for the types of files we'll mostly be working with it will be mostly be instantaneous. Once you have completed that task I can grade your submission. However, there is a second part to this assignment - I also want you to upload your story to the Blackboard Discussion that I open up for you (remember you made it clean, fun, and readable?), so others can read your short story and comment upon it. And you will also read and comment on 2 of your classmates' stories, making the minimum of 3 posts that you are going to get used to doing per discussion question while you're in my class. Make sense? If not, let me know. But you'll basically be doing an upload of your file to a blackboard discussion also (NOT just copy and paste) so everyone else can read what your creative little mind has to say.
   
    
2. So one of the first things you need to get comfortable with in any online course is working with the communication systems in the course, so that you may properly understand how to engage your professor and each other. There are two main forms of communication in our class - system email and discussion boards. It's important to understand that system emails do not go outside of the class, it is just a system for communicating private email messages to each other, and is limited to Blackboard. Unlike something like Gmail or yahoo, which can obviously get to anyone else with an email address. But there's a couple of neat things about traditional emails that also get carried over into our system emails, and I want you to know about them, understand them, and be able to use them.

First off is understanding the difference between CC and BCC. This comes from the old days when everything mail and memo-wise was done with paper. If you never heard of it before, CC stands for Carbon Copy. This literally meant that a piece of carbon paper was inserted between two sheets of blank paper, so that when people typed on one sheet of paper, it's transferred to the other sheet of paper. Hence carbon copy. The purpose of this was to make sure that someone else (the recipient of the CC) knew what was going on, without actually directing a letter to them. They just got a carbon copy of whatever was being sent out to the original recipient. Why would you want to do this? Well, it's typically used to keep other people "in the loop" on something that's going on, and it's a good way to enhance communication. It's also open and honest, unlike our next topic, which is the BCC. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it's a little more nefarious. The BCC is the same thing as the CC, except the original recipient of the note does NOT know that anyone else is receiving a copy of the note. Hence the term Blind. So let's say I am grading your papers, and I want to let your Mom know that you got a bad grad without telling you that I am telling her, I might issue a note, email, or letter to you informing you of your bad grade, and then send a BCC to your Mom. She will know that you got a bad grade, but you won't know that I sent her the message. So you could see how this gets a little tricky (no, I'm not going to email your Moms, Dads, or anyone else!).

Really, you should just work under the assumption that anyone anywhere anytime can have access to your texts and emails, so assume the world is one big BCC. Especially considering that there's been proof now that the NSA monitors pretty much everything. So if you don't want it recorded or put out there as your words, don't write it and don't say it! So what do we do with this? Well, for your first small assignment for the class, I want you to do several little email exercises. First, I want you to find 2 people you do not know in the class and introduce yourself to them via email, and send me a CC on each one of those introductions. Next, I want you to contact 2 more people via email, and then CC the original 2 people that you contacted, and then BCC me! I will know you have done the assignment correctly when I receive 4 emails from each of you, 2 CCs and 2 BCCs. Yes I know this will get complicated quickly and that you will all have introduced each other very well by that point, but it can't hurt to get to know one another! This is a simple introduction to email and how it really gets used, and I know most of you already are well acquainted with it and probably just text now anyway, but it's a way for us to get started and to have some fun in the beginning here. I have a few of these exercises to begin with so you'll just have to put up with them.

In order to "turn in" this assignment, please copy and past a version of an email you sent so I have something to grade, and the rest of them I will see in the email threads you create. But something has to be handed in here in this section order for me to grade you. So if you don't read this all the way through and see this and follow my instructions, you won't get a grade.

 

1. Please come up with a few ideas of things, concepts, or ideas you would like to research in the social sciences/testing and assessment. Please incude a reason why you would want to research these things, how you think you would research them, and what kinds of results you think you might get. Then, go out and see if you can find a non-professional (not a peer-reviewed) article about your research topic. Hand in that article with this assignment. Please do not send me links, only the complete article. Finally, post your research topic in the discussion forums with a brief explanation about it (there will be a separate discussion board for this).