Course Introduction

As people living in the United States at the same time, we tend to have similar views about the nature of human beings, what liberty and equality mean, what the ends of government should be, and, given those ends, how government ought to be structured. Few of you probably dispute, for example, the United States' philosophical commitment to "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all of its citizens. Far from being isolated in our own time, however, these opinions are shaped by a long history of thinking about politics—we are the heirs to this tradition of modern political thought. Our project for this semester will be to learn about our inheritance.

There are no formal prerequisites for this course, though I invite you all to bring a healthy curiosity and a willingness to engage in thought, discussion, and writing—with me, each other, and the texts we will be reading.

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Required Texts

There are seven primary texts for the course. They are:

• Niccoló Machiavelli, Selected Political Writings, edited and translated by David Wootton, 1994.
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Edwin Curley, 1994.
• John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, edited by C.B. Macpherson, 1980.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings, translated by Donald A. Cress, Introduced by Peter Gay, 1987.
• John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, edited by Geraint Williams, 1993.
• Karl Marx, Selected Writings, edited by Lawrence H. Simon, 1994.
• Laurie M. Bagby, Political Thought: A Guide to the Classics, 2002.

In addition, the course pages include links to a few readings in electronic format.

The primary texts are available from Friday Center Books & Gifts at the Friday Center. You can order the books online, or you can print out the book order form to fax or mail with payment for texts as indicated on the form.

Links for any additional reading materials are provided on the weekly lesson pages. Just click on the reading assignments to view these materials.

Students enrolled in Carolina Courses Online can access online library resources from the UNC Library System by linking to Library Services for Distance Education Students. This site includes information on using general online reference works as well as accessing e-reserves. The UNC library staff is available to assist any students who have difficulties accessing online library resources.  If you encounter difficulties, please report your problem by visiting this Web page for reporting a problem.

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Grading and Requirements

Your Responsibilities

The grade in this course will be determined by your performance on exams, weekly quizzes, writing assignments, and participation in the discussion forums. Exams will make up 20 percent of your grade (10 percent each), quizzes 30 percent, writing assignments 25 percent (10 percent for the first assignment and 15 percent for the second), and discussion forum participation 25 percent.

Grading is on the +/- system, and is as follows:

Exams (20%)

You will take one midterm exam and a final exam, each of which will count 10 percent toward your final grade. The exams will consist of 50 multiple-choice and true-false questions, and will be administered using Blackboard. Each exam will be available online for approximately one week. The midterm exam will cover Lessons 1–8 and the final exam will cover Lessons 9–14. You will have 45 minutes to complete each examination. You may not use your notes, books, Internet, or other resources during the exams. Exams must be taken during the week they are available. No make-up exams will be given without prior arrangements with me.

Quizzes (30%)

Each week you will have an online quiz on the reading material you have been assigned. The quizzes are due by midnight Eastern time each Tuesday night (except for the Lesson 1 quiz, which can be taken any time during the week). This ensures that you complete the readings before participating in the discussion for the week. 

Each quiz will consist of ten questions. The quizzes are administered using Blackboard. A link on the lesson page will take you to the Blackboard site where you will enter your Onyen and password. You will then be able to access your quiz. You will have ten minutes to complete each quiz. You may not use your notes, books, Internet, or other resources during the quizzes. Quizzes must be taken weekly by Tuesday night at 11 pm. No make-up quizzes will be given without prior arrangements with me. Forgetting to take a quiz by the deadline will result in a zero score for that quiz.

Writing Assignments (25%)

You will prepare two writing assignments of approximately 1,250 words each (about five double-spaced typed pages), one on material from the first half of the course (worth 10 percent of your grade), the second on material from the second half of the course (worth 15 percent of your grade). I will post the essay topics in Blackboard at least one week before they are due. The objective of these essays is for you to critically analyze the issues you are assigned to consider. Making good use of the discussion forum can often improve the quality of your essays.

Your essays should be thoughtfully crafted, well organized, concise, grammatically correct, free of spelling and typographical errors, and supported (where appropriate) with textual material using the citation method outlined in the course Expectations for Writing Assignments. You should carefully review this document before beginning the semester, and again before you write your essays.

Essay due dates are listed below in the Course Schedule. You will submit your essays to me via e-mail as an attachment. They must be turned in by the due date specified. No late essays will be accepted without prior arrangements with me.

Discussion Forum Participation (25%)

In traditional classroom settings, participation in group discussions often plays a large part in the learning experience. Because the constraints of online learning preclude that face-to-face contact, you will have the opportunity to share your ideas and insights, pose questions, and respond to fellow students' postings in our electronic classroom, the discussion forum. Questions for you to discuss on the forum will be provided, but students do have specific responsibilities for directing and sustaining the forum conversations (see below).

You will be graded on both the quality and quantity of your contributions. A passing grade (not an “A” or a “B” or a “C,” but a passing grade) for each "meeting" of the discussion forum will require you to submit a minimum of three contributions. Quality posts above and beyond the three required are certain to boost your grade above merely passing. As of the first day of each new lesson period, I will move on to the next discussion forum and will not be reading any additional student posts on the prior lesson’s forum. Therefore, all discussion forum contributions must be made by the end date of each lesson period at 11 pm to receive credit.

It is essential that you complete the assigned readings for each lesson before the week covering the lesson begins. Because so much of our learning in this course is based on our discussions in the forums, it is crucial that everyone has completed the readings. This means that you should read carefully, taking notes in whichever style you find most useful (but one that involves some sort of writing), and review your notes before you post. I’ll give you a list of questions or other notes on each lesson page to help you focus on important sections or problems in the text.

You should consider the following questions while you are reading:

• Summary: can you provide a simple summary of what the author says?
• Arguments and Evidence: can you explain the central argument(s) and the evidence used to support it/them?
• Rhetoric: what is the style and tone of argument employed by the author? How does the author want you to feel after reading the text?
• Omissions: does the author ignore certain evidence or obvious counter-arguments?
• Reaction: what questions are you left with about the text? How did the text make you feel?

In most instances, I will provide a comment or question to initiate the discussion, but you should feel free to engage other students as your interests dictate. Comments and questions should express an awareness of the topic being discussed and a thoughtful understanding of the reading material, not just your opinion. The purpose of the forums is to share ideas, develop arguments, and work with other students to enrich your grasp of the course material. Please make an effort to be a part of the conversation, replying to threads in such a way that the discussion is advanced by what you say, and starting a new thread only when the topic you want to broach isn’t already being covered in another conversation. Simply posting “I agree” or “I think that’s wrong” doesn’t really help to advance the discussion. Try to support your ideas by citing the course materials and readings. Finally, it is important to keep up with the forum and check it regularly so that we might have the most fruitful discussion. "Backfilling" your posts to the forum is counterproductive and easy to detect because each post has the date and time attached to it. In other words, if I see that all three of your posts were made within five minutes of each other on Sunday afternoon, I will know that you haven’t been participating throughout the week and your grade will suffer.

The discussion forums are located on the Blackboard site. You will need to have a UNC-Chapel Hill Onyen (Only Name You'll Ever Need) and password to enter the Blackboard site. See Course Mechanics for more information.

The Honor Code

While completing the reading responses, essays, and discussion forum posts for this course, please 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."

An especially serious Honor Code violation is plagiarism.  If you have questions, please consult me.

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Instructor Notes

My Responsibilities: What You Can Expect from Me

Communicating

The best way to communicate with me is via e-mail at pmchugh@email.unc.edu. I will make a concerted effort to respond to all e-mail within 48 hours. Please include "POLI 271" in the subject heading of the message so that I can respond as quickly as possible—forgetting to do so may mean that it takes a bit longer for me to see your message and reply!

I will communicate with you via e-mail, as well, with periodic messages about the success of the discussion forums, and messages to individual students as needed.

Facilitating

I will not be a loud presence on the discussion forum, but I will be reading it daily and interjecting at times if I feel that the discussion is faltering, becoming uncivil, or simply headed in the wrong direction.

Grading

While exams and quizzes are graded automatically by Blackboard, I will be personally grading all discussion forum contributions and writing assignments. Writing assignments will be graded within two weeks of their due dates and I will post the grades on Blackboard and e-mail individual comments to each student.

Questions

Please don’t hesitate to approach me with any questions you have about the course material or the structure of the course. It’s better to ask sooner rather than later, and I can certainly help clarify both course material and course expectations and requirements! If you have technical difficulties such as broken links or an Onyen that won’t work, direct these kinds of questions to the friendly folks at the Friday Center. There is more technical information in the Course Mechanics section below.

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Course Mechanics

Blackboard

Your discussion forums, quizzes, and tests are accessed through a software program called Blackboard. There is a link to Blackboard at the top of every course page. 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.

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), go to 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

All communication from me 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 e-mail account using Webmail. You can have your Onyen e-mail forwarded to a different e-mail address by clicking “Forward email” on the Onyen Web site.

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. Hotmail users should be aware that Hotmail will block messages sent from within Blackboard because Blackboard uses "blind carbon copy" to protect privacy. We recommend that you use your UNC Onyen e-mail account rather than Hotmail for this course.

It is extremely important for you to save copies of any work you send to me via e-mail. If I don’t receive your work for some reason, you must have a duplicate copy, indicating the date sent, to prove that you submitted the assignment on time. It is your responsibility to maintain copies of your sent e-mails, as there is no way to guarantee that any e-mail message will be delivered.

Please check your e-mail software to see how it manages sent and saved messages. Some software automatically deletes messages one month after they have been sent; others only save messages if they are filed in folders; others save messages received but not those sent. You may need to send yourself a copy of your e-mailed assignment at the same time you send it to me, or you may need to print a copy of the e-mail message and any attachments to keep in your paper files. No matter how your system works, make sure you know how to save a copy of all work that you submit to me and that you save the copy for several months beyond the end of the course.

Other Questions

Contact me with questions regarding the content of the course and your progress. There is an e-mail link to me at the top of every lesson page. Again, please remember to include "POLI 271" 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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Course Schedule

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Lesson 1