PLEASE NOTE: Canvas has a built-in function that tries to calculate your grade based on your current performance. Disregard ANY and ALL calculations or totals that this algorithm throws at you. We are NOT using it and it is not setup to calculate accurate grades or totals. It is severely limited and cumbersome to setup behind the scenes. Until it improves, I won’t be using it.
Disregard any and all Canvas designations about whether an assignment is counted towards your final grade. ALL assignments, exams, and constituents listed here count towards your final grade!
Grading Structure: Your final grade will be based on three in-class (1.25 hours long) exams (26% each), five assignments (17.5%, 3.5% each), attendance (3.5%), and the “Syllabus Quiz” (1% of final grade).
Grades will be posted on Canvas gradebook. Students should regularly check their grades there. If you are missing a grade on gradebook or have found an error contact the instructors via e-mail right away. You have 7 days to correct grade errors from the time that homework grades are first posted on Canvas. After that, scores are final and cannot be changed.
Syllabus Quiz: You will read carefully through THIS ENTIRE online course website and then take the associated “syllabus quiz” on Canvas. You have an unlimited number of trials to get all the answers correct. This serves to familiarize yourself with the structure of the course. Please note DUE DATE on this quiz is Sunday, January 25th, 2026 at midnight (11:59:59pm).
Exams: Exams will consist of multiple choice, and true and false questions. All three exams are administered during the usual class period (see lecture schedule). Exams cover materials covered since the previous exams. There will NOT be a cumulative final exam during final exam week so, DO NOT be misled by information given on Duke Hub, etc. regarding final exam times. Disregard that information. If you are excused from an exam, you have 5 days to make-up said exam (this count includes weekend days). ALL make-up exams MUST be scheduled through the Testing Center. Athletes may NOT have their exam make-ups proctored on the road or by third parties (advisers, coaches, etc) – all athletes must make up their exams at the Testing Center. See Missing Exams tab for more important information.
Attendance: 3.5% of your final grade is based on class attendance. Attendance should be viewed as mandatory in ECS 101. My lecture slides are, by pedagogical design, limited to mostly images, graphics, animations, and videos. When I was a university student, I HATED lecturing-styles where professors just “read off their slides”, bombarded students with boring bullet points (often annoyingly “animated” using PowerPoint Entrance Animation options), and lazily excused their “slideuments“. You deserve better. I believe my approach makes lectures more interesting, effective, visually appealing, and more enjoyable for all (myself included). However, if you miss a lecture, you will be hard-pressed to reconstruct the relevant information from my slides, because of the lack of text.
Beginning January 22nd, 2026 (the day after Drop/Add), there will be the possibility that I will give an unannounced, pop-quiz during class, for a total of 6 pop-quizzes. You may miss ONE of these without penalty. After that, for every pop-quiz you miss, I will take off 0.7% off your attendance (up to a total of 3.5%). For how to be officially excused from a lecture, please see the Attendance and Missing Class tab.
Assignments: Assignments vary from exercises on Google Earth, watching documentaries and answering questions about them, to doing simple worksheets. In all cases, each assignment comes with its own online Duke Canvas quiz. To get credit for the assignments, you MUST complete these quizzes. You will get THREE attempts to get a full score for each quiz. Only completed quizzes are counted as completed homeworks. You do not hand in any worksheets or packages that might accompany the assignments. Assignments will be made available by the second week of class. You can complete them anytime you wish before the deadlines, but it helps to do them during the time the material is covered in class. PLEASE note deadlines for each homework! No late homeworks will be accepted under any circumstances, however, at the end of the semester (April 17th-19th), you will have the opportunity to make-up or retake ONE assignment of your choice. To view assignments, go to the Assignment Tab.
Final Grade Cutoffs +/-: Final grade cutoffs will follow this distribution (your final percentage will be rounded to the nearest integer):
A+ 98, 99, 100
A 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97
A- 90, 91
B+ 88, 89
B 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87
B- 80, 81
C+ 78, 79
C 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77
C- 70, 71
D+ 68, 69
D 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67
D- 60, 61
F <60
THERE WILL BE ABSOLUTELY NO EXTRA CREDIT IN THIS CLASS
(Extra credit is an odd US idiosyncrasy that solicits embarrassed smirks among our international colleagues). There is no such thing as extra credit in the real-world work-environment.
Recent Comments