Please read this page very carefully and follow all links! 

This course consists of 24 lessons each designed to cover the equivalent of 1 three hour in class lecture. Each of the 24 lessons will be presented on the dates listed in the Lesson Calendar and Assignments.Note that three of the lessons are not really lessons at all, but rather are examinations which will be given  from 4:00 pm until 7:00 pm] on three Thursdays: November 10, 2011, February 09, 2012 and March 29, 2012 as listed in the Lesson Calendar and Assignments. It is essential that you be able to attend classes at the York University campus on these three dates. If you cannot attend these classes for any reason, please choose another course. In order to obtain the credit in this course you must have attempted all three examinations!

What is required to do well in this course?

A positive attitude and a willingness to surf the internet are important assets. There is no textbook to buy  but you will need to do quite a bit of reading of material taken from the internet. You also will need to do the assignments that accompany each lesson. These assignments need to be turned in weekly and reflect whether or not you have done the required readings. I expect the readings will require a minimum of 3 hours per week with another 3 hours needed to do the weekly assignment. This means I expect you to be able to devote about 6 hours a week to this course. I will take most of the examination questions directly from the weekly assignments! In order to complete the latter you will need internet access, preferably a fast one. There will be a few assignments that require you to listen to or view certain movie clips. If you have very slow access, you will find such assignments tough to finish. These assignments are worth 21% of the course grade. It is important to note that they cannot be handed in after the preset due date. Thus you will not be able to do all the assignments in one mad week of work. You must do a little bit each week. In addition there are three in class examinations in this course. The first examination on Thursday, November 10, 2011 covers the first 8 lessons and is worth 30.1% of the course grade. The second in class examination will occur on Thursday, February 09, 2012 and will cover the material from Lessons 9 through 16 and is worth 30.1% of the course grade. The final in class examination, worth 15%, will be held on Thursday, March 29, 2012 and will cover Lessons 17 through 21.  All examinations are scheduled to run from 4:00pm until 7:00pm on the three dates mentioned.

You should now click on each of the 5 links of the main menu at the top of the left column on this and all other pages of this website to get a feel for the course. If you need to contact me or Niki Lacatus in the NatSci office check out the  Contacts page for details. If you are out of the country or out of the province, then OCTES is your contact at York for details on examination procedures [please see the Contacts page for details]. It is a good idea to bookmark the course web-site. This will enable you to get back to the left hand menu and subsequently to any portion of the website you need to find. A discussion forum will be hosted on the Course's Moodle site. Bookmark this site for rapid access as well. Please also make sure that you have set your browser to allow scripts from our Course's Moodle site - or else you won't be able to see the sign in page and many of the other features of that site.