Course Syllabus

Course Communication

Communication in this course will take place via Messages.

Messages is a private and secure text-based communication system which occurs within a course among its Course members. Users must log on to Canvas to send, receive, or read messages. The Messages tool is located on the Course Menu, on the left side of the course webpage. It is recommended that students check their messages routinely to ensure up-to-date communication. 

This is the best method to communicate with your instructor privately.

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

Introduce Yourself Video Blog

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

1. This course has 1 assignment utilizing the Video Blog tool. Within the lesson 1 you will find how to upload a video into the Introduce Yourself blog.  Students will upload all course videos to the particular assignment blogs and by the due date noted in the Blogs portion of this syllabus.
2. Blogs can be found in the Blog portion of the Discussion or within the content area of the course.

Assignments

Assignments

Assessments

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.

Weekly Blogs

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 twelve blog topics. The topics will be posted in "Discussions" 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 12% 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. You can miss one blog without penalty. 

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 20 minutes to complete 10 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 Introduction to Studying Religions, Indigenous Religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and 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 #Weston1208. 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 #Weston1208
• Accompany each picture/video with a short comment (<140 characters) about the picture and your purpose for posting it.
• Post a screenshot to the class discussion board. This makes sure that everyone is able to see it, even if you have privacy settings on your account. 

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 discussion board.  Students are expected to post responsibly, adhere to copyright laws, and post images that are deemed respectful in accordance with University guidelines. 

 

Group Wiki Assignment

Students will work together in groups to present some of the most important contemporary issues that a particular religion is struggling with today and present it in a group wiki.  Religions will be determined by the group title that students sign-up for.  Groups will be divided by their chosen religion.

Students will be able to sign up for available groups from week 1 - week 3 in the groups section of the course.  

Students will write up short summaries (at least 250 words) of five contemporary problems, discussing why it is a problem for the religious tradition and how the religion is responding to it.  In addition to student written summaries, your wikis should also include: links to articles and websites, images, infographics, videos, or other relevant visual aids on your group pages. Please review the wiki rubric for a more complete idea of the required elements for a successful wiki page. 

Your project is only as good as your resources. You need to make sure that you use reliable resources, especially online. There is a lot of misinformation out there! Look for official websites, government websites, academic articles, and legitimate newspaper articles

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. 

The wiki tool allows the professor the ability to see each students contributions to the group wiki.  Group members are encouraged to equally contribute content to the wiki, as group participation will be factored into your final grade.

Furthermore, students will have the ability to evaluate their group members and their own contributions to the final project utilizing a iPeer evaluation tool.  This group evaluation assignment is worth 50% of the wiki total grade and must be completed by the wiki due date.  Students will be able to find the iPeer link in the week 15 course content area.

iPeer Group Evaluation

iPeer is a web-based software application that allows students to complete evaluations of their peers. . Through this evaluation students will be asked a set of questions examining the quality of each group member's contributions to the particular group assignment.  Students ratings will be anonymous and comments will be required of the evaluator to justify their rating. This is a mandatory assignment that is worth 5.5% of your final grade and is due at the end of the assignment.

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.

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 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.

Be sure to read the Grademark comments (feedback) from your professor.