Procedures

1. YOU MUST CHECK YOUR E-MAIL BEFORE YOU START YOUR WORK FOR THE DAY!!! This is how we can keep track of your involvement. Remember that COOLSchool policy requires evidence for continuing involvement. The red flag comes up if we haven't seen evidence of work for a period of more than 5 school days. You can review your handbook for more information on this policy.

2. WEEKLY CHECK-IN. You are required to send an e-mail check-in EVERY week, preferably the same day every week. For example, if you choose Fridays as a good day to check in, you must e-mail me every Friday. If you know that you are not going to have access to a computer on a particular Friday, please do your best to notify me. You could simply e-mail ahead of time saying that you are going out of town for 2 weeks and won't have e-mail access. A weekly check-in includes the following items.

#1. What have your worked on? What progress have you made on readings, or research?

#2. What questions do you have?

#3. What are your goals for progress next week?

#4. Did you meet your goals from last week? (From week 2 and after)

3. PACE YOURSELF. Make a schedule for yourself so that you finish the course within the five-month deadline. Although there are no specific deadlines on an assignment-to-assignment level, there is an overall deadline that you have been notified about by your school, or registration paperwork. See the suggested timeline on the Lessons page. Feel free to skip around in the lessons. Sometimes, you will have to because you will be waiting for an experiment to progress. Use good time management/multi-tasking skills and work on future assignments. In one case, I suggest that you begin on a future assignment, at least set up an experiment while you are in a previous unit so that its ready to go when you get there! DO NOT leave all the work for the last week! It will be almost impossible to complete, and I WILL NOT ACCEPT more than 3 lessons' worth of work or more than 1 exam during your last week.

4. EXAMS. After you have completed the lessons in each module, take the exam. The exam can only be accessed from the last lesson in the module. Exams can only be accessed once! EXAMS CANNOT BE RETAKEN! Make sure that you can dedicate plenty of time without interruption before you click on an exam! All exams are open note. Even though you have completed a module and already taken that exam, you are expected to know that material for future units. Although not the primary focus, the next exams may contain questions where the material was more specifically addressed in a previous module, but has been built upon in the current module. Many exams have built-in extra credit. If you see a question that doesn't sound familiar right away, it's probably worth extra credit. You have a chance to surf the net and find new information worthy of extra credit. Don't become frustrated or nervous if you know you haven't read about something... take the opportunity to find out something new, and earn more points!!!

5. SAVING. To avoid being in a frustrating situation, it is advisable to save your work in a word-processing program. Imagine yourself working on a report, and losing everything you've worked on because of a network error. The error could be from the COOLSchool end, or on yours. In either case, you will not be excused from the assignment, and must begin again. Avoid this by doing your assignments (it may only be necessary to do this on the longer assignments that require a report/essay) in a word-processing program. Save early, save often. When you are done in the word-processing program, simply copy and paste into the correct area when you are submitting your assignment.