A.4 The Expected and the Extras

What you need to know about exceptions, extensions, and the (un)expected

In every course, there’s a set of expectations for your work and your progress: what assignments you do, when you turn them in, what you show up for, and so on.

But then, in almost every course, there’s…“wiggle room”: some leeway or flexibility, for when things go wrong. Maybe you could get an extension on a project deadline, or make up a test, or have an excused absence from class because you’re sick.

Here’s the thing. It is important to me that in my courses, the “wiggle room” is clearly stated up front. No secrets, no guessing, no “the syllabus says X but if you ask nicely you can have Y,” no “is my excuse good enough.” This is important to me because not everyone is equally comfortable asking for exceptions and extras; not everyone even knows what to ask for. Stating the options clearly and openly is much more equitable – and it saves you a lot of stressful wondering about whether you’re going to be “granted” some flexibility.

So, below I recap what the expectations are for this course – what you would do on a “standard” trip through the course. And then, I list all the extras – the “wiggle room,” the options you have to provide extra flexibility if something goes wrong. They’re all right here! And they’re all available to everyone.

This flexibility is designed to account for whatever is going on during the semester: illness, injury, travel, personal emergencies, mental health days, sports trips, religious or cultural holidays, crunch time in some other class or activity – whatever. Everyone’s experience is different, but almost everyone has something happen during a semester.

That said: sometimes Really Big Stuff happens. If you’re experiencing Really Big Stuff – something that is going to affect your work in an ongoing way, or take you out of action for more than a week or two – please talk to me about it. We’ll work out how to move forward.

A.4.1 The Expected

Here’s what I expect from a student in this course:

• Participate fully in our class meetings. This means more than just showing up for 75 minutes! To engage with the course, you need to:
  • Prepare for class ahead of time, by doing any assigned reading and reflecting on what you do and don’t understand so far (Pre-class Questions, due the night before each class)
  • Attend class meetings on time, without distractions, and participate in discussion as you’re comfortable
  • Review and reflect on what you learned at the end of class (Wrap-up Comments, due after each class)
• Practice your skills outside of class each week (Practice Problems, due each Sunday night)
• Demonstrate your understanding on written problems (Assessments, in class every other Wednesday)
• Demonstrate your skill by applying our class topics to a dataset “from the wild” (Project, components due throughout the semester and a presentation in the last week of class)
  • Support your classmates’ work on their projects with constructive feedback (on each project component)
• Practice integrity, curiosity, and kindness in your work and in your interactions with your classmates

That’s the roadmap for moving through this course. If you do these things, you’ll show standard engagement. Your letter grade will depend on the level of proficiency with our course topics that you show on the Assessments and Project; for most folks, consistently following a routine like this is the best way to build that proficiency.

But – in life as in statistics – there’s always error. Sometimes, things go awry, and you aren’t able to follow the roadmap as you planned to. Which brings us to:

A.4.2 The Extras (aka the Wiggle Room)

Here’s the list of “extras” available to you as a student in this course. If you’re wondering about an exception, extension, extra credit, makeup work, etc., check here to see what’s possible!

This is a pretty extensive list, and it may feel confusing. My suggestion is that you don’t think about it. Don’t try to game the system; it’s stressful and risky. Just try to do the course as expected, and if something comes up, you’ll know where to look to find out what options you have.

• About classes:
  • There is no direct penalty for missing class (except that you miss that material and you’ll have to do it later!). But you can’t do a post-class reflection if you weren’t in class, so you miss out on those engagement credits.
  • You can do a pre-class reflection even if you aren’t going to be in class. It still counts!
  • Quite a lot of students miss a certain number of classes over the course of the semester. The thresholds for engagement credits are designed to reflect this; for example, you can miss two whole weeks of class and still land at “Standard” engagement. See also “Extra Credit” below.
  • If you know you’re going to miss class, I really appreciate it if you tell me ahead of time, since it can help me plan the session for that day. But it’s not required – sometimes you don’t know in advance!
  • If you miss a class, take a look at your classmates’ reflections from that day, to see what we did that day. You are then responsible for filling yourself in on what you missed, by working with classmates, meeting with the TA, or coming to office hours.
• About Assessments:
  • If you miss an Assessment time for a reason beyond your control, you can make up that Assessment if you and I can find another time for you to do it within two days. (This works way better if you let me know about missing the Assessment as soon as possible!)
    • “Reasons beyond your control” means things like illness, family emergencies, and religious/cultural holidays.
  • If you miss an Assessment time for a reason (at least partly) within your control, you can’t make it up the same week…but see below about retake slots!
    • “Reasons within your control” means things like job interviews, non-emergency travel, having a lot of work due, not having time to study, forgetting to do the reflection on a previous attempt, etc.
  • If you can’t find a time to make up an Assessment, or even if you did take it but it didn’t go as well as you’d like, you can use a retake slot to try again!
    • Retake slots are during class on the Wednesdays when we don’t have Assessments.
    • To use a retake slot, you must submit a reflection and request form by Monday night. If you’ve taken the Assessment before and are going for a second try, this includes a discussion of your previous attempt and how you addressed what didn’t go well.
    • You can request a second try at any previous Assessment, not just the most recent one.
    • Third attempts are not allowed unless you have a reeeeeally good reason why it’ll be different this time.
• About Practice Problems:
  • Practice Problems can be turned in up to one week late for half the engagement credit. (See Extra Credit below if you’re concerned about your engagement credits!)
  • That said, remember PPs are graded for completeness, not correctness. It’s often better for your learning to do your best at all of the problems – including writing down where you’re stuck or what you’re unsure about – and turn ’em in on time, rather than pile up more work for yourself the following week.
• About the Project:
  • Intermediate components of the Project can be turned in up to one week late for half the engagement credit.
  • Project feedback can’t be turned in late, because then it isn’t useful to the person getting the feedback :(
  • Cautionary note: The final component of the Project is a live, in-class presentation. This is super important because it determines your proficiency grade, not just engagement credit. And because all your classmates have to be there to see it, it cannot be rescheduled or extended. If something really dire happens, talk to me and we’ll see what we can do; but it’s on you to organize your (probably enormous) end-of-semester workload to make sure you are ready to present on your scheduled day.
• Extra credit:
  • There is some extra flexibility built into the course around earning engagement credits – because I want to recognize that folks may engage with the course (or specific parts of the course) in different ways. This is also a good way to compensate for missing classes or Practice Problems.
  • You can earn additional engagement credits by posting to Topic Conversations – Moodle discussion boards that relate to various topics we’ll see in the class.
    • You can post a question, a thought, an answer to someone else’s question, whatever. But your post must be substantive (not just “yeah, that sounds right!”), specific (not just “help i don’t get least squares”), and yours (not a copy of someone else’s comment, or AI-generated text).
    • You can post to any Topic Conversation at any time, even later in the semester, if you happen to be reviewing an earlier topic!
    • You can earn up to 4 additional credits from Topic Conversation posts in a single week. No spamming :)
  • You can also earn more engagement credits by reviewing Project Components for additional folks in your peer group (you’re usually assigned two people’s work to review, but can earn more credits by doing more).