Communication. RU Online has a threaded Discussion Board where you can post comments, ask questions, reply to the comments and questions of others, etc.; I will be an active participant. There is also a Digital Drop Box for submitting assignments on RU Online and facilities for emailing the instructor and your classmates and for checking your grades. Email sent via RU Online is sent to the recipient's Roosevelt email address and I will be using this to email the class, so please check your Roosevelt email regularly. Logon to RU Online and check it out.

Due Dates. All due dates for the course will be strictly enforced. It is expected that all assignments will be turned in by the due date. No late work will be accepted without prior approval from the instructor.

Participation.  Class will consist of discussion and problem solving with very little lecture.  Everyone is expected to participate:
         ■ by asking and answering questions;
         ■ by working on exercises and activities, sometimes in groups; and
         ■ by presenting and discussing solutions to exercises, activities, and homework problems.
In order to participate effectively, you must be prepared and up-to-date.  Attendance in class is critical to your success in this course, and it is imperative that you work on a consistent basis. You should plan to spend 6-9 hours per week outside of class studying for this course; a great deal of your learning in this course must be on your own. It is your responsibility to
         ■ do the Preview Activities and the Assigned Reading before class,
         ■ do the Homework problems after class, and
         ■ seek help as needed.
A portion of your grade will be for class participation.

Preparation. Each section in the text is preceded by several Preview Activities, whose purpose is to prepare you for the readings and discussion of the section. Ideally you should attempt the Preview Activities before reading the section; after completing them, read the section and modify your solutions if necessary. You may work in groups on the Preview Activities, but each person must write up his or her own solutions. Before the classroom discussion of a section, one of the Preview Activities for that section will be collected for grading. I expect that mistakes will be made on the Preview Activities and that you will learn from these mistakes, so grading will not be based on whether or not everything is correct, but rather on whether or not a serious and substantial effort was made to complete the activity (with scores of 4, 2, or 0 on the graded Preview Activities). After class, do the assigned homework problems; these will not be collected but will be reviewed at the next class upon request.

Assignments. During the semester, there will be several take-home assignments that will be announced in class and be due the following week

Portfolio Project: You will be given ten mathematical problems to complete for a "Proof Portfolio."  You may submit, via the Digital Drop Box on RU Online, each of the Portfolio Problems two times to be critiqued. They will be returned, with comments, via the Digital Drop Box. After each submission, you have the opportunity to rewrite your portfolio proof prior to submission for a final grade. However, no more than four problems may be submitted for review during any given week. Start work on the problems early. Two problems only require Chapter 1 of the text and three others only require portions of Chapter 3 and the earlier chapters. So you can complete, or make significant progress on, half of the problems by the end of the sixth week of the semester - and earn at least 20 bonus points into the bargain.

Graded Work and Use of a Word Processor. I expect your very best on all graded assignments. All solutions for the problems on the Portfolio Project must be written using a word processor capable of producing the appropriate mathematical symbols and equations, and submitted in a form readable by Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect. Microsoft Word and its Equation Editor, which is available on all the computers in the Computer Labs, is one such word processor.  The tutorial Using the MS Word Equation Editor by Prof. Steve Simonds of Portland Community College is an excellent introduction to the use of the Equation Editor.

Use a 12 point font (Times New Roman or a similar font) and standard margins. Your papers must be spell-checked and proofread for grammatical correctness as deductions will be made for spelling and grammatical errors. Mathematical Writing. One of the primary objectives of this course is to learn to write mathematics well and, in particular, to learn to write mathematical proofs. Writing is an important part of communicating mathematical results. You will be required to write mathematical proofs and solutions to problems on the tests and assignments. Writing proofs and solutions means more than writing formulas and circling an "answer". Everything you write is your "answer" and it all will be read and evaluated. You must explain all significant steps, using complete sentences with appropriate formulas and graphs included. The grading of the written assignments will be based on the quality of the writing, the quality of the mathematical content, and the logical organization of the writing.
 
You might find the documents ProofGuidelinesSundstrom.pdf, by the author of the text, Ted Sundstrom, and ProofGuidelinesSklar.pdf, by Jessica Sklar of Pacific Lutheran University, interesting and useful. (They are on the faculty web and on RU Online.) They collect and expand on the writing guidelines given in the text and will help you to write in a conventional mathematical style.