Course Syllabus

Course Communication

Good communication is vital to successful online courses.

Contacting me through Canvas' Email feature.

Visit our Writing Resources webpage for more information on professional writing and technical communication skills.  

Blogs are an open communications tool for students to share their thoughts. Here you can post text, images, links and attachments, open for comments.

There will be thirteen blog topics. The topics will be posted in "Blog Topics" folder in the Course Content. Students must post well thought-out comments based on the required work throughout the semester. Participation is required and represents 11% of your final grade. Both the quantity and the quality of your posts will contribute to your grade. Please see the sample blogs and blog rubric to review the expected components. All students are required to participate in all of the topics (at least 200 words). Blogs must be posted during the period they are assigned and are due by 11:59 pm on the Monday after the end of the lesson.

Once you have composed your original posting, take some time to carefully review other postings within your discussion group. Pick two that are most interesting to you and provide meaningful, detailed, and constructive feedback.

Keep in mind that your discussion forum postings will likely be seen by other members of the course. Care should be taken when determining what to post.

Quizzes

A weekly time-restricted, online quiz will be given on each religious tradition. You can take each quiz two times, and the higher of the two attempts will be recorded. Even if you do well on the first attempt, it is advisable to use both attempts. You will not receive the same quiz every time; the computer randomly chooses the questions from a quiz database. The objective questions on the Exam 1 and Exam 2 will be taken directly from this database. Thus, the more times you take the quiz, the more questions you will receive and the better prepared you will be for the exams.

For the quizzes, you will have 30 minutes to complete 15 questions. Each quiz will be open from Monday of the assigned week to Monday of the following week, and you can take it on any of those days at any time.

Important Policy on Quiz Resets: Quiz resets will not be granted. You will receive two attempts to complete each quiz, if you are logged offline or you have a technical failure while attempting the quiz, then you still have the second attempt to complete the quiz.  Resetting quizzes after they have passed will require a serious and verifiable reason (death in the family, hospitalization, serious accident, etc.).

If you know that you will be unable to take a quiz during a specific week, contact the instructor in advance, and the quiz may be opened so you may take it early. It is the responsibility of students to keep up with the readings and take the quizzes on time.

In order to mitigate any issues with your computer and online assessments, it is very important that you take the "Practice Quiz" from each computer you will be using to take your graded quizzes and exams. It is your responsibility to make sure your computer meets the minimum hardware requirements.

Assessments in this course are not compatible with mobile devices and should not be taken through a mobile phone or a tablet. If you need further assistance please contact FIU Online Support Services.

Exams

The Midterm Exam and the Final Exam are both online and time-restricted examinations. They are located in the Assessments area of the course menu.Students have only one attempt to complete both exams, unlike the course quizzes. Please make note of this important difference.

Midterm Exam will cover Basic Religions, Indigenous Religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism/Sikhism, Daoism/Confucianism, Shinto.

Final Exam will cover Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Alternative Paths, and the Modern Search.

In order to mitigate any issues with your computer and online assessments, it is very important that you take the "Practice Quiz" from each computer you will be using to take your graded quizzes and exams. It is your responsibility to make sure your computer meets the minimum hardware requirements.

Assessments in this course are not compatible with mobile devices and should not be taken through a mobile phone or a tablet. If you need further assistance please contact FIU Online Support Services.

Instagram Assignment

For this semester, students will be required to participate in an Instagram assignment.  You must submit at least three pictures or Instagram videos throughout the semester and tag these pictures/videos to the FIU Religious Department’s Instagram page @fiu_religion.  Each picture/video must be accompanied by a short comment and the hashtag #Weston1181. The picture/video must demonstrate an interaction between any religion and everyday life. Students are encouraged to interact with the content posted by their classmates and others on the fiu_religion Instagram page.  

In order to receive credit for this assignment you must:

• Post at least 1 picture/video by each Instagram assignment due date.  There will be 3.
• Tag the FIU Religious Department’s Instagram page @fiu_religion
• Accompany each picture/video with the hashtag #Weston1181
• Accompany each picture/video with a short comment (<140 characters) about the picture and your purpose for posting it.

Feel free to Review wiki How's "How to Use Instagram webpage."

In order to use Instagram you will need a mobile device such as a smartphone, ipad, or tablet.
Instagram cannot be accessed on a desktop.  Students who do not have access to a mobile device can upload pictures to the class facebook page REL3308 FB Page.  Students are expected to post responsibly, adhere to copyright laws, and post images that are deemed respectful in accordance with University guidelines. 

Contemporary Applied Analysis Term Paper

There will be one essay assigned throughout the semester, which is aimed at assisting in the comprehension and synthesis of the concepts presented throughout the course. This assignment is specifically related to your Global Learning engagement outcome that you will demonstrate an ability to engage critically with diverse forms of religion in local, regional, national and international contexts.

For your research paper, you will choose a specific religious tradition that we have studied in class and apply it to a contemporary moral or philosophical issue. For example, a paper may explore the response of Theravada Buddhism to prostitution in Thailand. Another example may be to explore abortion through the lens of Japanese Shinto.  Other possibilities include: Brahmanic Hindu perspectives on poverty, Evangelical Christian perspectives on in vitro fertilization (IVF), Native Hawaiian perspectives on genetically modified food.  You may choose to use the religion that you researched for your WIKI, or you may choose another. You must do research on a specific religious group, i.e. Southern Baptists not “Christianity.” You will need to provide a well-thought out argumentative essay where you support your analyses. You must utilize at least three academic sources.

This essay will be at least 1500-2000 words long (6 pages double-spaced) and will be worth 20% of your grade. This is a formal academic essay and students must cite their sources. MLA is the preferred citation style in Religious Studies. 

Submission: Students must submit their essays to Turnitin.com via Blackboard's Assignment Dropbox

This assignment requires three separate submissions in order to receive full credit for this assignment.

1. The first requires you to submit your complete paper to the “Initial Research Paper Submission” in the Turnitin Assignment Dropbox so that your paper can be sent your classmates for Review.  It is imperative that you submit this assignment on-time, since if you do not you will be unable to complete the second portion of this three part assignment (5%).
2. In the second portion of this assignment you must access the “Research Paper Peer-Review” link in the Turnitin Assignment Dropbox area of the course.  You will be directed to review three of your classmate’s papers.  In order to receive full credit for this portion of the activity you must answer all questions presented to you for each paper (5%).
3. Lastly, you will evaluate your reviewed paper and make any necessary edits to it.  You will then submit your final version to the “Research Paper Final Submission” link in the Turnitin Assignment Dropbox area of the course (10%).

Late Papers: Late papers are only accepted under extreme and verifiable conditions. Papers are deducted 1 letter grade per calendar day and are only accepted within the first 3 days late. 

Students are responsible for reading their blackboard messages and all announcements posted by the instructor. The instructor also reserves the right to make changes to the syllabus by means of announcements or messages with ample time allowed for students to respond and adjust appropriately.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Plagiarism, or attempting to pass off another's work as your own, falls into three different categories:

1. A written work that is entirely stolen from another source;
2. Using quotations from another source without properly citing them; and
3. Paraphrasing from another source without proper citations.

Students are expected to understand the definition of plagiarism. See the University Code of Academic Integrity if you need further clarification. Offenders will receive a grade of F for the plagiarized assignment, and possibly the course.

Important:
You will need to do research; your textbook and required readings will not have enough information about the topic. You will need to consult a minimum of three outside sources and one must be a book reference. You will also need notes in your paper, and a Bibliography/Works Cited page in MLA style. 

Do not use Wikipedia as an internet source. You may use internet sources, but use only academic sources from the internet. (Academic sources list individual authors, name their sources, and have institutional affiliations.) Points will be deducted for infractions of these rules.

If you have questions regarding how to cite or what to cite, ask me BEFORE you submit your essay. If you turn in your paper and you "accidentally" plagiarize parts of your essay, you will fail the assignment and possibly the course. Better safe than sorry! To reiterate, ask me before the due date if you are unsure about how to cite your sources.

**Students may not submit work from a previous semester or from another class for this assignment or any other assignment in this course. It will be flagged for plagiarism by Turnitin.

Review the detailed Turnitin Instructions on how to submit your assignments and how to review the Grademark comments (feedback) from your professor.