Description: An introduction to the theory and practice of logical analysis. Special emphasis will be placed upon the logical appraisal of everyday arguments.
Class schedule: lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays, 1–1:50, in 3140 Wescoe Hall (enrollment code 18703); plus a discussion section once a week, with your teaching assistant
Teaching assistants: There are three teaching assistants for this course; here is their contact information and information about their discussion sections:
| name | e-mail address |
discussion sections |
office information | ||||
| times | rooms | codes |
hours |
location |
phone number |
||
| Jacque Darrell | fritz33@ku.edu | W, 3 | 4008 Wescoe | 22880 | R, 2–2:50; and F, 11–11:50 | 1008 Wescoe | 864-2045 |
| R, 3 | 146 Pearson | 22881 | |||||
| R, 4 | 4008 Wescoe | 22883 | |||||
| M, 11 | 4008 Wescoe |
22878
|
|||||
| Brandon Gillette | tuesdaysgreen@lycos.com | R, 8 | 3097 Wescoe | 22874 | M, 8–10:30; and T and F, 9–10:30 | 1006 Wescoe | 864-4135 |
| R, 9 | 3097 Wescoe | 22876 | |||||
| F, 8 | 4011 Wescoe | 22875 | |||||
| M, 8 | 3097 Wescoe | 22873 | |||||
| Clark Sexton | clarkinks@yahoo.com | W, 2 | 4008 Wescoe | 22879 | W, 3–3:50; and F, 10–10:50 | 1006 Wescoe | 864-4135 |
| R, 3 | 505 Summerfield |
22882
|
|||||
| R, 4 | 505 Summerfield |
22884
|
|||||
| F, 9 | 4011 Wescoe |
22877
|
|||||
My office is in 3070 Wescoe Hall, and I have office hours on Mondays and Wednesdays from 2 to 2:50. You are also entirely welcome to contact me by e-mail to make an appointment to talk to me at another time.
Your course grade will be determined by your grades on four tests, each of which will have a weight of 25 percent. The dates of the tests are given in the schedule, below, though they are subject to change if circumstances so warrant.
Work will be graded in accordance with the university’s grading system, as stated in the University Senate Rules and Regulations. Article 2 of those rules and regulations—“Academic Work and Its Evaluation”—contains a section called “The Grading System,” part of which I have copied below from http://www.ku.edu/~unigov/usrr.html#art2sect2:
The tests will be graded on a 0–100 scale instead of with letter grades. You can get a sense of how you are doing by using the following conversion scale (which is the scale I’ll use to convert your final average—as computed in the manner described above—to a letter grade for you for the whole course):
To do well in this course, you should be prepared to commit a considerable amount of time outside of class to reading the textbook and practicing the skills this course is intended to teach. According to section 5.1.1 of the Faculty Senate Rules and Regulations (http://www2.ku.edu/~unigov/fsrr.html#BM5___Section_1___Definitions), “One semester hour means course work normally represented by an hour of class instruction and two hours of study a week for one semester.” Thus, for a three-credit course such as this one, you should be prepared to spend six hours per week outside of class on reading and other out-of-class work.
In addition, I should note here that I take academic misconduct, especially cheating on tests and plagiarizing papers, extremely seriously, and am generally disposed to impose the harshest permissible penalties when it occurs. To enable you to meet my expectations in this regard and to do so without fear of inadvertently falling short of them, I will provide clear and specific guidance as to what does and does not constitute academic misconduct in advance of the tests. Meanwhile, you may consult article 2, section 6 of the University Senate Rules and Regulations (http://www.ku.edu/~unigov/usrr.html#art2sect6) for university policy in regard to this matter.
If you have a disability for which you may be requesting special services or accommodations for this course, be sure to contact Disability Resources (http://www.disability.ku.edu), at 22 Strong Hall or at 864-2620 (V/TTY)), if you have not already done so, and have that office send me a letter documenting the accommodations to which you are entitled. Please also see me privately, at your earliest convenience, so that I can be aware of your situation and can begin to prepare the appropriate accommodations in advance of receiving the letter from Disability Resources.
Almost all course documents, including this syllabus, will be available on the web site for the course, the URL of which is
(If you don’t want to type in this whole thing, you can stop after ‘utile’—at which point you’ll be at my personal web site—and then follow the links to the web site for this particular course.)
Handouts, worksheets, information about tests, and other useful materials will be posted at this site. The syllabus is also one of the pages at the above site, and since it will probably be revised and elaborated as the course progresses, I encourage you to check it online from time to time, instead of relying on a hard copy.
One thing that will not be posted on the web site is a record of your grades for this course, since I don’t know how to make a web page that will allow each student to view his or her own grades but not those of other students. So, to allow you to have online access to your grades, your teaching assistant will be entering your grades into the “online gradebook” at the Blackboard site for this course (if you’re not already logged in, then log in at https://courseware.ku.edu/webapps/login?campus_id=1; once you get to the Blackboard site for the course, click on ‘Tools’, then ‘My Grades’). Note that although Blackboard provides a shell for all sorts of course-related documents, I am using it only to provide you with access to your grades; all course-related documents, such as this syllabus and so on, will be at the non-Blackboard site mentioned above.
I’ve had the KU computer folks set up an e-mail distribution list for the course. In general, I’ll try to mention everything important (whether substantive or procedural) in class. But at times, I may use the e-mail distribution list to send you information that you will be responsible for having or acting on, so it is your responsibility to make sure that you read mail that I send to this list. You can do this by making sure that you (1) have an e-mail address, (2) are registered for the course (because this list is updated every night to reflect current enrollment, taking account of drops and adds), and (3) read your e-mail. There is one complication that you should be aware of: if you have both an Exchange e-mail address (e.g., so-and-so@ku.edu) and a non-Exchange e-mail address (e.g., so-and-so@yahoo.com), and you prefer to receive e-mail at the latter address, then mail sent to the e-mail distribution list for the course will not necessarily go to it, even if you have registered it with KU as your primary e-mail address. (This is a known problem with the KU distribution-list system.) To deal with this problem, either check your Exchange account as often as your check your non-Exchange account, or arrange for mail sent to your Exchange account to be forwarded to your non-Exchange account. For more information on this problem and how to solve it, see the Exchange Distribution List Primer (http://www.email.ku.edu/dlists/primer.shtml) and look at the answer to question 2: “Some of the people on my list say they’re not getting my list mail. Why?”
(See http://www.registrar.ku.edu/pdf/069final.pdf for KU’s final-exam schedule.)The final-exam period will be used for the test on chapters 10–12, not a cumulative exam. So, we will use only the first 50 minutes of the exam period.