GEOL 105: Violent Earth

Course Overview

Welcome to GEOL 105: Violent Earth! I'm Carrie Bartek, and I'll be your instructor for the course.

This course examines Earth as a dynamic planet, changing catastrophically during earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, landslides, floods, hurricanes, and meteoric impacts. In addition, you will study longer-term but significant changes in climate and coastlines, and the conditions that led to past mass extinctions. The causes and effects of all these phenomena will be addressed as well as their impact on humans, and the extent to which humans have exacerbated the effects of natural phenomena and sometimes amplified the risk exposure to these hazards will be examined.

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Course Objectives

At the end of this course, you will be able to

• explain the correlation between population growth and increased risk exposure to natural hazards
• predict the locations of plate boundaries, earthquakes, and volcanoes on a shaded relief map
• outline and explain the causes of and hazards associated with earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, landslides, floods, hurricanes, and meteoric impacts
• outline and explain the causes and effects of changes in the coastline and climate
• explain how humans have exacerbated the effects of natural phenomena and increased their risk of exposure to the hazards noted above
• describe the causes of mass extinctions.

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Text

There is one text for this course:

Natural Disasters, 7th edition, by P.L. Abbot. New York: McGraw Hill. 2008. (ISBN 978-0-07-305034-8)

The book will serve as our primary resource for the course. The text has a Web site with some extra resources that will be useful to your study. In addition, Web resourcese have been provided at the end of each lesson to help you visualize key concepts. Please e-mail me if you find a site that would be useful to the rest of the class, or you can post it on one of our discussion forums in Blackboard.

The text is available from Friday Center Books & Gifts. You can order it online, or you can print out the book order form to fax or mail with payment for your text as indicated on the form.

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Library Services and Resources (including e-reserves)

Students enrolled in Carolina Courses Online have access to the UNC Library System. Visit Distance Education Library Services to access a wide array of online services and resources including e-reserves, online databases, online journals, online books, and live help with research and library access.

Most online resources require you to log in with your Onyen and password. If you have any trouble finding the resource that you need or logging in to a resource, you can contact the library through the contact information at Distance Education Library Services. You can chat live about your problem, or send an e-mail to request assistance.

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Course Structure and Requirements

This course is different from a traditional class. The lecture material will be presented on the lesson pages, and you will study the course materials by reading content material, visiting Web sites, and completing assignments. In order to do well, you must be self-motivated and proactive. We don't have the luxury of face-to-face communication and must rely on e-mail and the discussion forum to share information with each other. The assignments, quizzes, and exams will help me determine your level of understanding, but you must post to the discussion forum or contact me via e-mail if you have a question or need further explanation of a particular concept. I'm more than happy to help.

Grades will be awarded on a 1000-point scale. A final accumulation of 750 points = C; 850 points = B; 900 points = A.

You can calculate your grade at any time by adding your total points and dividing by the total points available up to that time. You can check your points total in the Gradebook at the Blackboard site.

What to do first:  Most people find that the most challenging part of online classes is finding the time to devote to them. So, I suggest that you obtain a planner or calendar and plan a regular time every day that you will devote to your course work. A general guideline of the time required for classroom courses is to spend two hours of study time for every one hour of lecture. We can use that same formula for estimating the time required for a distance education course, and since a three-credit class typically meets three times a week, I estimate that you will need about nine hours each week to complete your work. Some students will require less time to learn the material and some will require more.

Communication: Please note that e-mails regarding the course will go to your UNC Onyen e-mail address (the one that appears when you post to the discussion forum). Off-campus users can access their UNC mail using Webmail. You can have your Onyen e-mail forwarded to a different e-mail address by clicking “Forward email” at the Onyen Web site. We strongly recommend that you use your UNC e-mail account for all e-mails regarding your course.  

Make sure you check the course Blackboard site every day Monday through Friday for important updates.

These are the best ways to contact me:

• E-mail: cbartek@email.unc.edu
• Post a message on the discussion forum
• Phone: E-mail me at the above address with a phone number where I can reach you and I will call you at that number

I answer e-mails between the hours of 9 and 5 Mondays through Thursdays, and between 9 and 1 on Fridays. You can expect an answer back from me within 24 hours from 9 am on Mondays through 1 pm on Fridays.

E-mail requirements: All e-mail correspondence should contain your full name and “GEOL 105” in the subject line. If the e-mail does not contain your full name and “GEOL 105” in the subject line, I may mistake your e-mail for spam and you will not receive a response. Please show respect and be professional in your e-mail communications. Respectful and professional e-mails include a greeting such as “Hello, Ms. Bartek” (not “hey”) and a message written in proper English. A message in proper English uses complete sentences, whole words (not “u” for “you” or “i” for “I”), and has been reviewed by you at least once to make sure it makes sense and says specifically what you want. I really do want to help you, but I reserve the right to delete e-mails that do not adhere to these criteria.

Participation Requirements: The UNC Undergraduate Bulletin states the following regarding participation: “Regular class attendance is a student obligation, and a student is
responsible for all the work, including tests and written work, of all class meetings. No right or privilege exists that permits a student to be absent from any given number of class meetings.”

Your weekly attendence in GEOL 105 will be checked by your participation in the discussion forum and your completion of assignments.  Five percent of your point total at the end of the semester will be deducted from your final grade for each week you have not participated in the class.

Assignments: Each lesson has a section of assignments for you to complete. The assignments include working through a Study Guide for each lesson. Some lessons will have exercises or a quiz; you will submit your exercises and take your quizzes at the Blackboard site for this course (see Course Mechanics). Each lesson will also include discussion forum participation. 

Quizzes: The quizzes are designed as formative learning tools to check your understanding of the topics addressed in the lessons and to hold you accountable for completing all components of the lessons. You can use your notes but you cannot collaborate with others on the quizzes. The questions will be a combination of short essay and multiple choice and are randomly generated from a question pool. You will have the option of taking these quizzes more than once, but the questions may be different each time a quiz is taken. You will be able to see the multiple-choice questions you answered incorrectly. Essay questions must be graded by the instructor so you will not be able to see the correct answers to these questions until the due date has passed. Because the quizzes are timed and generated from the question pool, it is in your best interest to complete the Study Guide questions before you take the quizzes—you will receive a higher score on the quiz by completing these questions first. 

Discussion forum: The discussion forum is an important part of this course where you can discuss the Study Guide questions and any other components of your lessons. You can ask questions and receive or give help via the forums. The only thing you can’t do on the discussion forum is discuss quizzes and tests, and you must not be rude. I will check the forum daily Monday through Friday. You should plan to contribute to the discussion forum at least three times per week. Points will be awarded according to the grading rubric below.  Because it is important to post early to enhance your learning, the grace period does not apply to your discussion forum participation, and you will only receive points for your discussion forum participation if your first post is made by Tuesday of the week the forum posts are due.

The following ten-point grading rubric will be used for your discussion forum participation:

Due dates:  All assignments (including quizzes) for each lesson are due at 11:50 pm on Thursday of the lesson week, except where noted. You may submit assignments early, but if you are locked out of a quiz or assignment because it is late you will receive a zero. Assignments in this course cannot be made up. If you do not submit an assignment when it is due, you will receive a zero for that assignment.

Start your work early in the lesson week (see the sample schedule for my suggested weekly plan). I am available to answer your questions and will check my e-mail daily Monday through Friday. Please do not wait until Wednesday to work on your lesson, as you will likely have questions and will not have enough time to complete your work. If you wait until the last minute and encounter a computer problem, you may not be able to complete assignments before they are due.  

Recent Natural Hazards Essay: You will write an essay on events in the recent news that relate to one of the topics we will study in the course. You will post your essay on the discussion forum for your classmates to evaluate. As part of your grade for this assignment, you will evaluate one other student's essay (on a first-come, first-served basis—there will be one evaluation per essay), and you will create one multiple-choice question that evaluates what students should have learned by reading your essay. Instructions for the essay can be found in the Assignments section of the Blackboard site.

Exams: The exams will be available on Blackboard within one week of when they are due. Exams are closed book and closed notes. Exams 1 and 2 will be 60 minutes long and consist of 50 multiple-choice questions. The value of one question will be deducted from your score for each minute you work past the allotted time. (A grace period of five minutes will be granted to account for local/server clock differences.)  If you miss an exam or are locked out of an exam and a make-up exam has not been approved, you will receive a zero for that exam.

A great way to prepare for your exams is to print a clean copy of the Study Guide for each lesson the exam will cover and try to answer the Study Guide questions without referring to your notes. This is an excellent way to see what you know and what you do not know. Then, focus on studying the material you cannot readily answer on your own.

Grace period: Because students occasionally have a problem submitting work on time due to sickness, work, or a computer glitch, an automatic 24-hour grace period for assignments, quizzes, and exams is provided to all students. This exception does not apply to discussion forum assignments. Please note that if you have a problem after 1 pm on Fridays, I will likely not be able to answer your questions or help you with a computer glitch. If you wait until the last minute and have a problem with a quiz, exam, or assignment, you will receive a zero.

Make-up exams:  Exams cannot be made up except for extraordinary circumstances such as military duty, hospitalization, or death in the immediate family (spouse, child, parent, primary caregiver, siblings). Prior or immediate notification of the absence is required, as is documentation of the reason. If a make-up exam is approved, the make-up exam date must be established as soon as the make-up is approved. The make-up exam will consist of essay questions, and you will need to make special arrangements with me to take the exam.

Cumulative final exam: The final exam covers Lessons 9 and 10, the material covered in Exams 1 and 2, and selected questions created by students for the current events essay. The final is worth 200 points.  You are required to take the final exam in order to pass the course.

Honor Code: Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the UNC-Chapel Hill Honor Code.  When writing essay questions, you must put answers in your own words so I can assess how well you know the material.  I expect you to use appropriate technical terminology in a way that shows your understanding of it.

Sample schedule: The following is an example of how you might structure your course work each week. If you have a job during the week, you may want to do most of the reading and preparation on the weekend and submit your work at the beginning of the week.

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Course Mechanics

Blackboard

Your assignments, quizzes, exams, and discussion forums are accessed through a software package called Blackboard, and you will need to log in to Blackboard using a unique identifier known as your UNC Onyen (Only Name You'll Ever Need) and Onyen password. You will not submit work to the instructor via e-mail; you will use Blackboard to submit all work.

There is a link to the Blackboard site in the gray navigation bar at the top of every page in this course. Click on that link, and then use your Onyen to log in to Blackboard. Click on the “GEOL 105” link, and you will see navigation buttons on the left taking you to the components of the course located on Blackboard.

If you experience problems accessing Blackboard, this is what you should do:

• If you do not already have a UNC Onyen, go to the Onyen Web site and follow the instructions for creating an Onyen.

• If you have an Onyen but have forgotten it (or the password), visit the Onyen Web site.

• If you have your Onyen but can't log in to Blackboard, contact Janice Durham at the Friday Center.

• If you can log in to Blackboard but can't find this course listed, contact Janice Durham at the Friday Center.

• If you can't locate an exam or discussion forum in Blackboard, contact the Instructional Designer.

• If you have other technical problems while using Blackboard, contact Blackboard Help (use the Help button in Blackboard, or call 919-962-HELP).

E-mail

E-mails regarding the course will go to your UNC Onyen e-mail address (the one that appears when you post to the discussion forum). Off-campus users can access their UNC mail using Webmail. You can have your Onyen e-mail forwarded to a different e-mail address by clicking “Forward email” at the Onyen Web site. Please also notify Janice Durham at the Friday Center of the change.

If you use a filter on your e-mail account, you are responsible for ensuring that it does not prevent you from receiving messages from me, the course listserv, or Friday Center staff.

We strongly recommend that you use your UNC e-mail account for all e-mails regarding your course. Hotmail users should be aware that Hotmail will block messages sent from within Blackboard because Blackboard uses “blind carbon copy” to protect privacy. If you forward your mail to a commercial e-mail service provider (yahoo.com or msn.com, for example), messages from your instructor, Friday Center staff, or other students may be delayed because these service providers sometimes place temporary blocks on messages originating from universities. If you are using a commercial e-mail service provider, the e-mail links in this course may not work for you.

Submitting Work

Your assignments, quizzes, exams, and discussion forums will be submitted through Blackboard, and you will need to log in to Blackboard using your UNC Onyen  and Onyen password. You will not submit work to the instructor via e-mail; you will use Blackboard to submit all work.

There is a link to the Blackboard site in the gray navigation bar at the top of every page in this course. Click on that link, and then use your Onyen to log in to Blackboard. Click on the “GEOL 101” link, and you will see navigation buttons on the left taking you to the components of the course located on Blackboard.

To access quizzes and assignments, click on the “Assignments” tab in Blackboard, and scroll down until you find the appropriate lesson folder.  The quiz and/or assignment for that lesson will be in the lesson folder.

You can access the discussion forums through the Lesson folders or by using the “Discussion Board” tab on the Blackboard home page.

Other Questions

Contact your instructor with questions regarding the content of the course and your progress. There is an e-mail link to your instructor at the top of every lesson page. Please include "GEOL 105" in the subject line of your e-mail.

Contact your Instructional Designer at the Friday Center about problems with this Web site, including bad links.

If you have any logistical questions as you work through the course (enrollment, Onyen, credits, withdrawal, and so on), contact the Student Services staff at the Friday Center for Continuing Education (phone 919-962-1134 or 800-862-5669).

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Lesson Schedule

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Honor Code

Remember that as a student of UNC-Chapel Hill, you are bound by the University's Honor Code, which states that "It shall be the responsibility of every student at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to obey and support the enforcement of the Honor Code, which prohibits lying, cheating, or stealing when these actions involve academic processes or University students or academic personnel acting in an official capacity."

All graded academic work must include a pledge comprised of the following: "No unauthorized assistance has been received or given in the completion of this work."  An especially serious Honor Code violation is plagiarism.  If you have questions, please consult your instructor.

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Lesson 1