Course Assignments

Due Dates and Missing Exams/Classes

Please adhere to all due dates on your class schedule. Exams are given only during the pre-assigned examination period (see “5. Exams and Quizzes” below right). Except for extremely exceptional instances, a make-up exam will not be available. Giving a make-up exam is unfair to those students who have made the effort to complete the exam on time.

Work schedules, out-of-town trips, or dating habits are not valid excuses for missing exams. If you must miss an assignment, please see me before the exam day to discuss your conflict. Final exams cannot be given early or on any other date than what is proscribed by the College. Please don’t ask.

All papers are to be typewritten; no handwritten papers will be accepted.

Assignment Breakdown

You may also want to look at what kind of performance is expected on submitted postings and evaluations.

Student-teacher contract 10 points
Chapter outlines 90 points
(9 outlines; 10 pts. each)
Response Papers/Blog postings 80 points
(2 posts; 40 points each)
Midterm evaluation 10 points
Exams 200 points
(2 exams; 100 points each)
Final Exam 130 points
Deaf Community Experiences (as completed; 20 points each)
Quizzes (as needed; 10 points each)
Total** 620 points
** This may or may not be the final total; quizzes may be given at without any notice and at any time. Scores from these impromptu exercises will proportionally be figured into your final grade.

Deaf Community Experience Projects (optional, but encouraged)

You want me to do what? For these assignments, you should seek out Deaf Community- or interpreter-related activities. Your best resource is the main gathering place for most of the Deaf and interpreting community in Weber, Salt Lake, and Utah Counties, the Sanderson Community Center of the Deaf in Taylorsville. There are activities constantly taking place here, ranging from athletics to political meetings to interpreting workshops. Check the Center for 1) a current list of activities and 2) ask if it is appropriate that students may attend a certain activity. Fees may apply. And, when it comes to privacy, Deaf people are no different than hearing people; ask first before just assuming you can show up to any activity.

Other resources can be found at Salt Lake Community College (Redwood Road campus) or here in Utah County; BYU, UVU, and SLCC have active, on-going, on-campus ASL clubs; UVU has periodic inservice for its interpreters. You may even have Deaf friends who are students here at UVU or BYU. Explain your assignment to them, and ask what activities may be happening around the area.

Take advantage of your participation to obtain real-life practical experience in relation to interpreting opportunities within the Deaf Community. Interact with people—get involved, ask questions, take opportunities to learn. Make your experience unique and worthwhile. If you need to, ask the instructor for direction and/or clarification. At the end of these experience, write about your interactions.

What this assignment is not. The purpose of this assignment is not to gaze into the proverbial fishbowl nor see how many Deaf people you can hang out and party with (although new social experiences may be a fringe benefit at times.) Your participation in the community for which you may someday provide interpreting services is contingent on your perceived relationship with the community. Instead of looking for “how do you sign that?” opportunities or just hanging out at league volleyball night, look for ways to build reciprocity, learn about and challenge current situations where interpreters are working, and get in tune with the local interpreting community.

Note: Because Utah and Salt Lake Counties are predominantly heavily Latter-day Saint (LDS) populated, many Deaf community activities are also religious activities. It is not an acceptable alternative for this assignment to attend Deaf church services; your involvement and interaction at a church meeting is not indicative of a typical Deaf Community function. If, however, you wish to investigate religious services as one of your assignments, please discuss your intent with the instructor.

Semester Assignments

  1. Student-teacher contract. Determine the parameters of a contract between you and the instructor that will help determine the evaluation and measurement of your in-class performance this semester. What grade do you want? Why? Thoughtfully include what requirements, stipulations, and conditions you’ll need to satisfy in order to warrant the grade you want to earn from this class. Additionally, explain what you feel the instructor can do/should do to enable your best performance. See the class schedule; this contract is worth ten points. Late submissions will not be accepted.
  2. Chapter outlines. To help you internalize concepts in our primary text, you’ll be required to compile outlines on chapters 2–5, 7–8, and 10–13. These basic yet fairly comprehensive outlines:
    • encourage your readings in the text
    • help you highlight specific areas of question for in-class discussions and exam preparation
    • (While we will not be formally reading or writing outlines on chapters 1, 6, and 9, we may bring elements of these readings into our discussions.)
    Outlines are due at the beginning of the first class of a new chapter (see class schedule for due dates). Completion of an outline indicates that you have studied the chapter; if you haven’t, don’t turn in an outline. Faked and rushed outlines are easily spotted and greatly undermine the class’s trust. Late outlines will not be accepted.
  3. Response Postings/Discussions. We’ll be using the online classroom to comment on preassigned topics (and any additional projects this semester):
    • At the very least, you’ll be required to 1) submit salient (read: thought-out and reasoned college level writing and thinking) posts about your perceptions of the topics and 2) make comments on other students’ posts and thoughts.
    • At best, you should endeavor to continue the threads you start, and really engage your fellow students (think: your fellow interpreting peers and colleagues) in a discourse about these topics
    • Additionally, you’re encouraged to use your blog as a journal to capture ideas, thoughts, and multimedia about interpreting practice and theory.
    You’ll want to understand more about the criteria for the depth and breadth of your postings. Additionally, all writing assignments are identified on the class schedule in orange. As a reminder, submitting a post indicates that you have actually read and put forth effort; faked work is easily identified, and will result in a reduced or failing grade on the assignment. Late postings will be penalized at 10% per day (not class period). Feel free to ask the instructor for direction at any time.
  4. Midterm Evaluation. About halfway through the semester, it’ll be time for a kumbaya of sorts, let the instructor know how you’re doing—“great,” “bored,” “frustrated”: get it out. It’ll be anonymous of course, but it will help you and the instructor do any course correcting if needed. Watch the class schedule in February for this; this evaluation is worth an easy-peasy ten points. Late submissions will not be accepted.
  5. Exams and Quizzes. There will be two exams and one final (comprehensive) exam given during the semester. Additionally, this semester (Spring 2011), we’ll be experimenting with online exams. Exams will be open for a finite time period and submitted to the instructor at the end of the end of the exam period. The purpose of completing and submitting exams outside of our normal class period flow is two-fold:
    • it gives us three extra days of discussion and instruction back that we would otherwise lose to sitting in class taking a test
    • it allows you to have an appropriate amount of time to craft a representative and comprehensive answer
     
    More details will be shared in class. Additionally, periodic unannounced quizzes may be given, to be completed in the online classroom in a primarily written/short answer format, and designed to assess your knowledge of concepts discussed in lectures, readings, and handouts. Unless there’s an absolutely exceptional reason, there is no makeup final exam (see “Due Dates and Missing Exams/Classes” above).
  6. Deaf Community Experiences (enrichment). Based on the criteria described at left under “Deaf Community Experience Projects,” post your experiences on your online classroom blog. In your postings discuss:
    • Your thoughts during this interaction with Deaf people in relation to the interpreting field. Be honest. Be detailed. Were you surprised at what you learned? Did your feelings about interpreting change during this assignment? How? Why? Explain.
    • Other people’s actions and reactions towards you and your reactions to their behavior.
    • Any new awareness and/or insight about interpreting in the community that you had not expected or thought of. Did you gain any new understanding as to the reasons for certain behaviors or cultural morés that Deaf people have? Explain.
    • Any anecdotes or descriptions of events that happened that seemed significant or helpful to your experience.
     
    While these are not required, you may complete as many of these assignments as you want during the semester. Review the Tips for Writing guidelines and criteria for how these assignments will be evaluated. If you need to, ask the instructor for direction and/or clarification.
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