This is an online class. As with most online courses, success in this class requires you to take responsibility for your learning and engage with the material regularly and frequently. Ideally, you should be engaging with course-related tasks each day of the work week. Each week, I have developed readings and activities that will encourage you to critically evaluate course material, and to apply that material to your own professional endeavors. During the semester, these activities will require you to interact directly with course material (i.e., your books and empirical articles), with me, and with your fellow classmates. All class assignments will be available for you through Canvas.

Online courses require the same time commitment as face-to-face courses. As such, if this class were being taught in-person during the 16-week semester, you could expect to spend approximately three hours each week physically in class (engaged in lectures, note-taking, discussions, and activities). UMKC presumes that instructors assign two to three hours of outside work for each hour spent inside the classroom. Therefore, it is not unusual for students to spend, in total, nine to 12 hours per week on each of their in-person courses during the semester. So, please be prepared to dedicate a similar number of hours to this course. The main difference between an online course and a face-to-face course is that, online, you can schedule your own time to dedicate to your studies. Another difference is that you will spend less time in this online course passively learning (e.g., listening to a lecture) and more time actively applying material to novel situations (or to your own professional life).

For many of the 16 weeks of the semester, you will be expected to complete the following tasks:

Read the assigned pages from your book
Read the assigned empirical article
Complete a discussion board post
Reply to two classmates’ discussion board posts
Submit a reflection paper

We all should get into a class rhythm fairly quickly, since the deadlines are relatively uniform across weeks:

Monday: Read the assigned book chapter

Tuesday: Read the assigned empirical article

Wednesday: Submit your discussion board post by 11:59 PM

Thursday: Submit your reflection paper by 11:59 PM

Friday: Post two replies to classmates by 11:59 PM