COM310-Section 6: GRADING—Fall 2006
Revised 10/27

Class attendance and participation (10%)

• 95% (<2 misses) — 10%
• 90% (4 misses) — 5%
• <90% (5+ misses) — 0%

Class participation means you attend and that you are up-to-date on your assignments and readings. You are expected to be prepared to respond to instructor questions and to contribute meaningfully to class discussions from your own initiative. Failure to participate will be regarded as being absent!

Reading Reviews (20%)

Write a short critique and personal review of each of the four text books.

• Review—Kunstler (assigned 9/6; due 9/22)
• Review—Gore (assigned 9/18; due 10/4)
• Review—Heinberg (assigned 10/4; due 10/16)
• Review—Meadows et al. (assigned 10/16; due 10/30 11/10)

Course Journal (15%)

Create and maintain a journal of your thoughts on the course (discussions, readings, viewpoints of others), relevant newspaper or broadcast news reports, etc. You should write frequent entries (5-7 per week) of a half page or greater. You may do this electronically or manually (suggestion: buy a spiral notebook and reserve it for this purpose). These entries should reflect serious (which can include humor, or course) and in-depth thought about the current state of the world's discourse on such things as peak oil, conservation, consumerism, life-styles, global warming, population, relevant religious themes (e.g., population policy, faith-based entitlements), etc. Recorded thoughts can be personal in nature (i.e., focused on individual life-style decisions) or commentary on the state of public affairs and outlooks. Journal will be reviewed by instructor during week of 11/6 and returned to you 11/13.

Individual Perspectives Paper (30%)

Assignment (Assigned 9/13. Due 11/20.)

Collaborative Database Project (15% 25%)

Each student will research a group of research university websites in search of a predefined (defined in class by consensus) profile to ascertain the nature and scope of transforming curricula likely to contribute to development of citizen leaders capable of making public contributions to debate on issues relating to the century of limits (e.g., local ordinances to reduce carbon emissions.)
Assignment (assigned 11/6. Data gathering due 12/1. Group summary paper draft due 12/11. Database and summary will be posted to the web by 12/15 (with assistance of the instructor).

Collaborative Perspectives Paper (10%)

Through group discussion leading to consensus, we will write and publish (to the web) a group paper setting forth perspectives on discourse within government or the higher education community relative to the century of limits.
Assignment (assigned 11/6. We will work on this in class and complete a draft by 12/4. Posted to the web by 12/15 (with assistance of the instructor).