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183-F18-Course Information
Chemistry of drug (CHEM 183)
McGill University
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SYLLABUS AND COURSE INFORMATION We realize that you have 8-10 courses in a normal academic year and this may well involve more than 20 different instructors in this time span. Thus the topic of “course rules and regulations/policies” comes up. It is clear that there are a host of nuances for your course package as each course is administered in a somewhat different fashion. We also realize that the set of rules and regulations for this course may seem long and somewhat complicated (the document is long). However, carefully read this before you ask other students or send us an email or pose a question for someone else in the class to answer on the Discussion Board in myCourses. We present some useful tips for success in the course. Further, watch for announcements on myCourses, the central information framework for the course. We believe we have answered virtually all of the common questions in the paragraphs below. If you email us with queries that are already answered here, you will simply get an email back saying that. Good luck in the course- we hope you learn a great deal. Some guidance may be helpful in order to derive the maximum information/performance from any one of these closely related courses. As you may be aware, the two courses (181, (Food) and 183 (Drugs) are designed to provide up-to-date data on these topics. These courses are offered once each year. These courses are administered by Continuing Education because the formal time slot is after 5:30 PM but are in a similar format and have the same 3 credits. The ultimate goal is for you is to take this information base and expand on it by taking a lifetime interest in many of the topics and keeping up with them by reading in the popular and professional press. The Food course (181) is now a fully online course offered in the Winter term although there are a few live meetings. Many students are concerned that they do not have enough of a chemistry background to handle the material. Of the over 39,000 students who have taken these courses over the past 36 years, very few seem to hold this view at the end of the semester. Each class is composed of students from nearly every faculty on campus (~50% from Science; 30% from Arts; and 20% from Management; Education, Agriculture/Environment, Music, Law and Engineering). It is also true that the Science students as a group tend to perform at a somewhat higher level on exams but not to an extent that should discourage students from any other Faculty. It turns out that Science students do not learn much of the factual information in their Science classes that we describe in these courses. They may be familiar with some of the terms, but so should any very well read student in any Faculty. This small advantage is not enough to permit them to simply write the exams with little preparation. As a check on this point, we routinely ask Chemistry Honours or even Chemistry graduate students (not in the course) to take one of the mid-term or final exams with no preparation. To date, only one person (a well-informed undergraduate now with NASA in Washington, D.) has even passed an exam. The point here is that exposure to the material is the key as the ultimate failure rate for these courses is very low and careful preparation permits the course to be well managed by nearly everyone. Note We believe that the best preparation is to closely examine and print appropriate slides found on the course website before each class. Note taking in class is encouraged, but by knowing what material is available in the slides ahead of time, it is generally not necessary to try to capture "verbatim" notes. Access to the site and other retrieval information is in this document. NTCs (Note Taking Club) are sometimes available but this is a case of buyer-beware. The notes may be excellent but we do not review them. Finally, this year we will not have “readings” as extra material but rather 6 specially prepared videos carried out by Jonathan Jarry from our Office for Science and Society. There will be likely two questions from each of the 6 events on the exams. The schedule will be posted and they are not going to be cumulative. The topics read in each section will apply only to the indicated exam. 1 Exam Strategies The information that we cover in the classes is the major source of the multiple-choice questions that form the basis of the evaluation scheme (2 mid-term exams, and a final exam). We try to make the questions as clear as possible with the answers being either wholly correct or wholly incorrect. Further, you should take the most reasonable answer as your choice as opposed to trying to find some “trick”. We do not create the questions with “tricks” in mind so when in doubt, choose the most straight-forward answer as opposed to thinking of some obscure, possible exception to the basic question. It is also true that the questions where a "guess" took place resulting in a correct response is not as frequently remembered. This is bolstered by studies that indicate that when people change a response in an exam, more than twice as often as not, they change it to a correct answer but their memory is such that when they miss the question and review their activity—they remember this event. The adage of “stick with your first answer” is likely not good advice. See: J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 88, 725 (2005). A similar number of exam questions usually evolve from each lecture so there is an attempt to evaluate the knowledge of the material in a fairly evenly distributed fashion over the whole course. The second midterm exam will not be cumulative from the material on midterm 1 and each of these exams will have about 65-75 questions. The final exam will be about 80 questions from the last section of material. The videos will not be cumulative on the final exam. We do not stress chemical equations; rather we are concerned with facts and concepts that use scientific/chemical terms; these terms may require extra work to master. They are however, terms that are routinely found in newspaper and magazine articles about the topics we deal with. When you encounter words/terms that are not clear, go (careful) to a search engine like Google and usually the explanation will be clear. Exams and Grades Mid Term Oct. 12 Friday Mid Term Nov. 9, Friday Final Exam (TBA) 30%- coverage to the end of Sept. 25th 30%- coverage to the end of Oct. 23rd 40% The mid term exams are held in various rooms on campus from 6:15 to 8:30 pm unless otherwise notified. Room and seating assignments will be indicated in class and listed on the myCourses site. If there are irreversible conflicts evolving around other academic schedules or work-related situations, let us know about a week or so before the exam date. Do not send emails immediately at the start of the course about these situations as experience has shown that many of the conflicts resolve themselves and there is no point in worrying about the problem that far ahead. We will try to make an alternate time available for the exam but it will almost always be in the early morning on the same day as the evening exam so as to have room space. The questions/answers found on myCourses on the front page are not meant to be a mid-term exam inasmuch as the questions are from most parts of the course. These should give you some idea as to the level of detail that is required. A useful way to study would be to ask questions in a small group in a similar format. By detailing each lecture in turn in such a group, it is likely that most of the ideas/facts of the lecture will be mentioned and discussed. One comment made by a U3 Arts student goes as follows as per “tips” for success in these courses. “After having completed two “World of Chemistry” courses, I have discovered that the key to success is in fact quite simple; it is not good enough to merely understand the “basic idea” of a concept, but to know all topics “in detail”. Challenging subjects are best tackled by listening to a lecture a second time.” 2 Admittedly, these are all arbitrary decisions, but the overall effect is to reward improvement on the final exam. If you do very well on the first midterm, do not let up your studying for midterm 2 as the material builds faster than you might think. Individuals taking the course as a pass/fail (S/U) option must make 55% to pass. We do not know the identity of those who are taking the course in this fashion. Exam Security According to Senate regulations, multiple (but content-equivalent) versions of each exam will be used. This means that the questions and answer positions are scrambled for the different versions. In addition, there will be seating assignments for the different rooms in which you write as scrambled seating is also mandated by Senate for all mid-term exams and final exams where possible. Also according to Senate regulations, answer patterns of all pairs of students in the course will be compared and students found to have written unusually similar exams may be investigated as per the regulations in the Student Handbook. These measures are taken in order to help insure that the evaluations are as fair as possible for all students. The seating assignments will be posted on the blackboards in the front of each exam room (or just outside the room) a few minutes before the exam starts. The seat designations are on the support bars underneath the seats as you face them. It should be pointed out that these regulations for scrambled exams and seating apply to all courses at McGill. If you believe that any of your other courses disadvantage you due to sloppy exam organization, you should write directly to Ms. Nicole Allard in Dawson Hall. Web Lectures As in previous years, (since 2000) we will be recording the sound and images delivered in a synchronized manner by way of the Web. It is possible that due to some technical difficulty, a lecture may not be properly recorded thus you should plan to attend class. However, should problems take place with the recordings, there is no need to send emails concerning this as we will likely already know about the situation and will do our best to remedy it in a timely fashion. In addition, mp3, mp4 and wmv recordings are available as well as from the link on our website in myCourses. You should know that the University-organized recording system (Lecture Recording System) with its URL on our website uses COOL software (Courses On Line, invented in 2000 and developed by the Office for Science and Society (AEF, JAS, DNH) in the Chemistry Department with the aid of two excellent programmers but it is under a different recording arrangement whereby in over 60 different rooms on campus, the lectures are automatically recorded (as per permission of the instructor) and automatically uploaded to the website after the class. In the case of a cancelled class or malfunction of the automatic recording, we will either redo the lecture on our laptops or provide a link to last year’s class that would be very similar to the one that was missed. We will give you the information should such an event take place. Do not get behind in the material as the information builds up. A good habit that many students follow is to briefly review the material before class – attend class regularly and use the web lectures to review material as needed. An innovation will assist in the navigation once a lecture has been accessed. On the recording, you will notice a panel on the left of the web page that has a thumbnail picture of some of the slides used in class. In addition, you can navigate by using the seek-bar at the bottom of the screen. You can obtain detailed information about the other World of Chemistry course by visiting the following website: oss.mcgill/ This is the site for the Office for Science and Society. Here, there are many interesting articles and AV “mini-lectures” that are of general public interest. The Trottier Symposium is in your listing and each year major speakers are assembled by the Office for Science and Society on topics of general public interest. You are assigned for the topics on October 30th but not on the Monday (29th) although it would be to your educational advantage to attend both nights. We expect to record the full Symposium but it is usually better to attend in person. The topic is “Minding the Future”. 4 Supplemental, Deferred and Final Exams In the event of a course grade of D or F, a supplemental exam is possible during the regular University terms. Supplemental and Deferred final exams are modeled very much along the lines of the actual final exam as to coverage. These supplemental exams are not scheduled with the instructors but solely via your specific Faculty and are navigated using Service Point. If a course grade of D or F is made for a graduating student, special “compassionate” circumstances may apply and the supplemental exam might be able to be arranged in time to clear the D or F grade well before the graduation time. In such an unusual situation, contact Professor Harpp about this issue. In the event of a missed final exam due to illness or some other difficulty, the arrangements are made via the Faculty/Service Point and not with the course administrator. You should check Service Point and/or the Student Affairs office of your Faculty. In these cases, there is no point in emailing the administrator (DNH) as he will simply have to direct you as indicated above. Finally, if you have some form of conflict with the time of the final exam, you need to see your Faculty or johnny@mcgill in General Studies in Continuing Ed. NO instructors have jurisdiction over final exam schedules and problems of travel etc. Further, be absolutely sure you do not miss your final exam time. Final exam administrators take a very dim view of excuses like "the alarm did not go off" or even "a secretary in the Department told me the exam was today." Finally, see the URL below for details on conflicts such as 3 final exams in 24 hours etc. mcgill/students/exams/conflicts/ Illness A final comment- if an exam is missed due to illness, a doctor's excuse is required- bring it to Room 322 in the Chemistry Building for transfer to the mailbox of Professor Harpp. Other reasonable absences will be dealt with on an individual basis. Usually, there will be one (only one) “conflict make-up” slot for those who have other serious commitments at the time of the regularly scheduled exam. As mentioned above, due to the lack of daytime room availability, such a make up exam will be held at 7:00 AM (for the usual duration) on the day of the evening exam. “Make-up” exams for legitimately missed midterm exams will not be offered and a modified formula worked out. Usually this is 40% for the written midterm and 60% for the final exam. This accommodation has worked out very well over the years and there have been, in all the World of Chemistry courses since 1981, only 3 students who had to write a 100% final exam. This is out of almost 120,000 exams. Administration If you have questions about course work, direct them to any of the Professors or write a note and leave it at Room 110 (Office for Science and Society). Email addresses for the instructors are: ariel@mcgill david@mcgill joe@mcgill jonathan@mcgill. You must direct all “administrative” matters to Professor Harpp. 5 7
183-F18-Course Information
Course: Chemistry of drug (CHEM 183)
University: McGill University
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