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Teachabit's Answer
RE: Chat Extra-Credit!
At the end of the year when your grade is made up, if you have attended at least 80% of the chats you get one extra point on your course grade. So, if your course grade would otherwise be 69% for the course, it would be 70% if you attended at least 80% of the chats.
According to Dean Cassie, the Professor has some discretionary power; however, at least some of the Professors are unaware of this, and labor under the assumption that the decision as to whether to aware the "extra credit" is made by a computer in the Administrative office.
[As an aside, I do not see how a Professor could assert his/her "discretionary power" if he/she is totally unaware that he/she has any! So, my advice on this aspect of the Rule of Concord Law, in Applying it to the Facts of Your Case is that in order to get the extra point if you have gone to ALMOST but not quite 80% of the chats is to bug your Professor mercilessly to give it to you, AND, if/when he/she tells you it is just an automatic calculation, bug Dean Cassie to let your Professor know of his/her discretionary powers!]
NOTE! I did not specifically ask whether each course attendance is calculated separately. For example, let's say your grade in Criminal, Torts and Contracts without chat credit would have been 85 (better than A), 69 (C+), and 59 (D+) respectively. Let's say that you went to 100% of the Criminal chats and 70% each of the Contracts and Torts chats. Thus, you have attended 80% of ALL the chats but only in Criminal (where you don't need any extra points!) have you attended over 80% of the chats. Do you get the extra point for ALL courses (i.e., is it "80% overall attendance") or just for the specific course(s) for which you attended at least 80% of chats (i.e., 80% course-specific attendance)? Clearly, in the above situation this question is crucial to whether your grades are A, B-, and C- or A, C+ and D+.
I have bugged poor Cassie enough on the "extra point for chats issue", so the ball is in your court to research Judge Cassie's ruling on the issue of whether the extra chat point is calculated and assessed generally or course-specifically. If you find out the answer, email Teachabit (@yahoo.com) and I will post Your Answer here, with proper attribution!
After my chat with Cassie, I learned some more stuff from Tech Support which I am certain will come in useful for someone. In deference to my desire to pass the Baby Bar in June 2003 I will express in IRAC form!
Issue:
In order to get credit for a Chat, do I actually have to do anything other than just log in to a chat for a millisecond at any time during the chat?
Rule:
When you log in, even for a milli-second, at ANY time during the chat, it triggers a "0-1" data decision, i.e., estream's dataset registers that you "attended" the chat. Estream then transmits the dataset to Concord. Concord has the option of, should they so choose, reviewing your degree of participation and ultimately deciding whether to give you credit for that chat. (Tech support asserted that Concord actually "monitors participation" but read infra to see why this is unlikely to be true except in unusual cases.)
Application to the Facts of the Case (GIGO):
The total chat attendance is only 1/100th of any student's grade; assuming there are 50-40 chats a year, each chat is worth less than 1/4000th of that student's grade; inasmuch as there are around 1000 Concord students, attendance at 1 chat for 1 student is worth 1/4,000,000th of the composite performance of all Concord students. So, given that admin seems reasonably competent to make intelligent decisions as to how to use its time, it is highly unlikely that anyone in administration actually does anything analytical with estream's dataset, as opposed to mindlessly incorporating the estream data into their grading rubric.
That said, if a student consistently logged into chats for a milisecond and then left, this would be noticeable to the Professor and would likely trigger the Prof's letting Dean Cassie know that the student was "gaming the system".
Also, if a student was "on the borderline" - i.e., if the dataset transmitted to Concord showed 75% attendance - and the student was a very active participant in the chats he/she had attended, Dean Cassie's statements to me indicated that in such a situation Concord would actually bother to review the student's participation record. This makes sense, since now we are talking about only a few students, and their participation could be efficiently determined by Cassie through an email to the Prof that said, "Was Jane Doe's participation in the chats of sufficient quantity and quality that we should accede to her request to give her 'chat credit' even though she only attended 75% of the chats?"
Conclusion:
1- If you don't care about your grade or are going to get an A in all of your courses without the chat extra credit (and are not vying for the Top Student Award), don't waste your time reading further.
2- If you attend over 80% of the chats in each and every one of your courses (see prior post, however), even for a millisecond, don't waste your time reading further.
3- Otherwise, even if you think the chats have no value (an assessment that I would disagree with but heck, you are entitled to your view), get to as many chats as you can, even for a millisecond so that your record of attendance data that is sent from estream's computer to Concord's computer indicates attendance. Thus, if your chat is on Mondays from 5:45 to 7:15 PM and have a hot happy-hour-date or an important business dinner meeting, leave your happy hour in time to get home and log-on by 7:14 (or set your dinner meeting so that you can get there in time if you leave the house by 5:46).
4- Any time you have time to stick around for the whole chat, participate as much as possible. This will help you learn more (that IS what you are here for, ain't it? and will also support any future request you have to give you that one extra point even though you got to only 79% of the chats. If you can't stay for the whole session, tell your Professor the circumstances so he knows not to ding you if you end up getting to slightly less than 80% of the chats.
Teachabit
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