Course Description
This third learning community in the first-year New Century College curriculum explores the construction of the social world across cultures and across time. Through the interdisciplinary study of history, literature, art and philosophy, you will investigate how the multiple worlds we inhabit (and inherit) both explain and constrain social behavior.
Individually, in groups, and in small seminars we shall probe questions fundamental to an understanding of the contemporary world: the creation of histories, the relationships between states and individuals, the crossing of cultural and geographical borders and the confrontations between the haves and have-nots within the global economy.
Throughout this learning community, we will also interrogate cultural artifacts through site visits, film and the Internet to gain knowledge and expertise in the discovery, interpretation and analytical application of evidence to illuminate our understanding of the world.

Required Texts
The campus bookstore stocks the following texts, including the course reader that faculty prepared.

New Texts:

Continuing Texts:

Online Readings:
You will also use online material, either from the NCLC 130 web page or from the World Wide Web. The day-by-day schedule includes the titles of online readings, and both the online day-by-day schedule and the weekly overviews include direct links to these readings. You will retrieve some readings for this course from academic databases maintained by the library.

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Course Requirements and Grading
Grading
In their grading, instructors may use different point systems, but all instructors will adhere to the following grade breakdown:

Class Participation

15%

Integrative Projects:

  • Integrative project #1
  • Integrative project #2
  • Integrative project #3

 

10%
15%
20%

Discovery Project

20%

Portfolio

20%

Class participation
As you know from your six weeks in NCLC 110, participation in a New Century College learning community requires both preparation for each seminar, and an active involvement during each seminar. As out-of-class preparation significantly enhances the quality of in-class participation, you will maintain your class participation grade both for the quality of your preparation for class, and for your participation in class.

Preparation
So, how do you demonstrate your preparation for each meeting?  First, in a learning community, it is particularly important for you to prepare for each class by reading the assigned texts carefully and writing discussion notes and questions. You should come to seminar intellectually prepared to engage with all the material for that session. Seminar leaders will integrate many different ways to allow you to show your preparation for class.  You might find yourself encountering, as you did in NCLC 110, overnight written assignments to prepare for the next day’s seminar.  You might begin or end seminar with in-class writings.  You might find yourself collaborating with your colleagues prior to, or during, seminar, or your seminar leader might ask you to pose challenging seminar questions about our texts to your peers. You might even encounter pop quizzes from time to time on readings and concepts central to each week's work.

In addition, we are all available and, more importantly, eager to discuss readings. If you do not understand the assignment for the next class, or you run into problems with a particular reading or exercise, let your seminar leader know as soon as possible. We are on campus several days a week, we enjoy talking about NCLC 130, and we’re more than happy to help in person, via e-mail or by telephone. But you do need to let us know as soon as you need assistance. Remember that if you attend class unfamiliar with the readings and viewings, laggardly in your writing, and indifferent to the ideas and work of your peers, your grade will inevitably suffer.

Participation
How about participation during each meeting? The in-class work for this learning community includes discussion, writing, research, presentations, formal and informal collaboration with peers, facilitation, and information technology instruction and exploration.  If you are uncomfortable speaking in a large group, you can share your ideas through writing or within a small group of peers. If you think best as you speak, you can demonstrate your capabilities in full-class discussions or collaborative presentations. If you think and communicate most effectively visually, you might excel as we investigate visual arguments and design portfolios. Whatever your learning style, whatever your intellectual and practical strengths, you should find several ways to demonstrate your excellence and contribute to our ongoing exploration of the social worlds around us. Faculty will schedule mid-term conferences to review your progress with you and to suggest ways of developing your work.  

In all your assignments, remember to refer to the texts (readings, lectures, films, site visits, etc.) you have studied during NCLC 130. If you cite specific passages directly or paraphrase ideas or arguments, explain the meaning of the cited passage/paraphrase and relate that meaning to the overall argument of your essay. If, at any point, you use words or ideas not your own, you must acknowledge them with a specific in-text citation and an entry in your list of works cited.

Guide to Activities
NCLC 130 meets Monday through Thursday each week in cohort, seminar or study group. We usually meet from 10 a.m. until 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. until 3 p.m. You are also expected to complete many of your assignments, such as integrative projects, electronic compositions and group collaborations, outside class hours.  This work will entail a substantial time commitment.

Please remember that Friday is not a “day off.” NCC does not schedule classes on Friday in order to allow you time to undertake the reading and research necessary to participate fully in class and to complete your assignments. In NCLC 130, the discovery research exercises, for example, are due on Friday evenings.

You will complete:

Each project should spring from a clear and compelling thesis.  Craft an argument that articulates this thesis and support each point in your argument with relevant, convincing evidence. Although the questions you will encounter contain several parts, you will only create successful responses if you integrate all the separate parts into a single analysis.

Inclement Weather Policy
We plan to continue our NCLC 130 work even if inclement weather closes the university. As soon as the university administration decides to close the campus, it posts an announcement via voicemail on the main university number 703-993-1000. If inclement weather appears imminent, you should call that number. If classes are canceled (for snow or any other reason), you should:

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Goals and Objectives
In NCLC 130, we want to encourage and facilitate three scholarly activities:

Course Objectives
Students will demonstrate their command of the material they have encountered in NLC 130 by:

This learning community stresses:

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Notes and Suggestions
On Participation
Not everyone is equally comfortable with participating in classroom discussion. Still, we do encourage you to try your best to voice your ideas and to respond to the comments of your colleagues. Whether in small or large groups, discussion enhances the learning experience and provides fresh perspectives on the texts you are studying. Each individual possesses unique personal experiences and unique patterns of readings, thinking and learning that will help all of us (faculty included!) to understand more thoroughly the materials we are studying. At the same time, we share an equal responsibility to foster an atmosphere conducive to productive collaboration, in which everyone feels safe to express openly ideas, opinions, questions and doubts. In a collaborative learning community, we each carry a responsibility to share those ideas.
On Reading Texts
Academic success requires active, reflective reading, and a set of tools, skills and questions to guide that reading. In NCLC 130, faculty ask you to “read” a challenging range of texts: primary documents, a novel, poetry, social and political commentary, scholarly and popular articles, as well as films, documentaries, visual art, and social and cultural spaces.
Faculty will review in seminar some of the skills necessary to read such works successfully, but you will find below a quick checklist to guide your reading. Remember to read actively, not passively, and enter into dialogue with your text. Take notes (do not simply highlight and move on), write down connections between texts and formulate questions to guide your reading. Knowledge of the author, her/his social context and the time and place of a text’s creation all influence the way we make meanings from a text. Questions to consider when reading a text:

On Viewing and Writing about Art
In NCLC 130, you will probably experience art in ways you could not anticipate. Art is far more than a beautiful painting or photograph hanging in a museum. In fact, art may actually have nothing to do with beauty at all. In this course, you will explore performance art, murals, sculptures, and other art genres that spotlight the influence of power and dominance, western hegemony, subversive and resistant narratives, and the persistence of cultural identities.
You will not be asked to explicate every aspect of a piece of art, but you should be able to identify the genre, theme, materials, and the goals of the work. You must not succumb to the temptation to ask the question “Is this art?” because we assume that, based on a wide range of scholarship about art, everything that we present as art is, indeed art. In addition, the question ultimately is an uninteresting one that could be argued ad infinitum.  Some questions you should consider when viewing and writing about art:

On Viewing and Writing about Film
In NCLC 130, you will watch a number of films from different countries, from different time periods and in a variety of genres. Although you may typically go to a movie for pure entertainment, you probably are affected by the various elements of the film: the story, setting, themes, script, music, pace, and resolution (or not).
In this unit, we have chosen films not only for the ways they engage the viewer but also for their relevance to the material we are working with. They may supplement the written texts by giving information not available in our texts, or they may provide visual representations of the material you are reading. Frequently, you will be swept along by the film’s narrative, but it is important for you to pay close attention to aspects of the film that may have played a role in generating your interest.
You should pay close attention to form as well as to content. For example, when extreme close-up shots of two characters are interrupted, even subtly with a cut to a letter lying on the table in the room, you know that somehow that letter is going to be useful to your understanding of the film as the narrative progresses. The form often offers subtle clues both about ideologies (gendered, racial, sexual, political, national, and economic) the film endorses and about the ways you might interpret the characters that enact that plot.
Once you have made observations about the form, you must interpret them. How do these formal features construct a film’s meaning? This short checklist will help you with your analysis.

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Negotiating a Group Contract
Negotiate is a verb that means to work or talk with others to achieve an agreement. Contract is a noun that means to enter into an agreement with a person or group of people to deliver goods or services to do something in mutually agreeable and binding terms, often in writing.

Why Do We Ask You to Work in Groups?
The four main reasons for group work are that you will come up with:

We achieve very little on our own. I may say I wrote an essay by myself, but in fact, I will have talked it over with colleagues, read and analyzed other people’s writings on my subject, asked a trusted friend or two to help me revise the essay and then submitted it to a professor, or the editor of a magazine or journal, who in turn suggests revisions and edits. “My” work constitutes the synthesis of many other people’s ideas, and is much more thorough and rigorous for it.

Four or five intelligences sparking off each other generate more ideas and more solutions than four or five intelligences working in isolation; more and more colleges and workplaces are capitalizing on this team energy. Learning to learn and create in a team equips us both for our own individual work as scholars in college and for the demands of the workplace and the other communities to which we contribute.

But the route to rewarding collaboration requires some posting of signs, because most of us have had both good and bad experiences working in groups. By analyzing our own experiences of working or playing in teams, communicating them to others, and drawing conclusions from shared information, we learn to apply individual ideas to communal goals. The group or team contract marks the first step in building an effective team.

The Contract
Your group should draft, modify and finally agree upon a contract to facilitate its work over the semester. The contract should be a written statement, agreed upon by all group members, about how you will work together as a group and what you can expect from each other in team work. (Think not only of specific group assignments, but also of informal ways of working as a team, such as meeting outside of class, collaborative writing, or helping each other to understand new technologies).

Think of groups at work in high school classes, in sports and in community organizations such as religious groups or volunteers for a particular cause. Think of movies you have seen about sports or other groups working toward a common goal. What problems arose in those situations and how were they solved? Think about:

Based on discussions and handouts of Lesley Smith, Cynthia Patterson, Ray McKelvy, Tracy Breneman and the group facilitating staff of NCC and the Freshmen Center.
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Academic Policies
Participation and Attendance
A learning community depends on active and sustained participation by all members. Participation includes attendance and engagement during cohort and seminars, and it means being on time and remaining for the entire class period. If you miss a class, you cannot earn credit for the discussions, in-class exercises and group work undertaken at that particular session. Your absence also penalizes your group members, who have to work without your input. Remember that participation in seminar discussions and group work counts in your final grade. If you know you will miss a class on a particular date, tell your seminar leader in advance.

Please understand that in NCLC 130 we value promptness. Arriving late to cohort and seminars is rude and disruptive. Your seminar leader will notice habitual lateness, and it will affect your participation grade for the unit.

Late Work
Major assignments submitted late will lose one letter grade per calendar day up to five days after they are past due. Faculty will not accept student work beyond five days past the due date. Faculty members have established a “life happens” rule, which allows you to submit one assignment one day late during the semester with no penalty. Under this rule, you simply turn in a page with “life happens” written on it, and you may turn in your assignment the following day.

Although the “life happens” rule is a no-questions-asked rule, you will be wise to save your “life happens” for serious problems. Remember, you may submit only one piece of work one day late, without penalty, once during the NCLC 130. The “life happens” option cannot be applied to the final discovery project, course portfolio or to group work. Portfolios will not be accepted after the due date.

In the case of bona fide emergencies (for example, your hospitalization), your seminar leader will work with you to determine alternative due dates for major assignments. It is your responsibility to arrange medical and dental appointments around your class schedule.

Remember: faculty will not accept any work that is more than five days late without a valid written medical note or notice of a major family crisis (such as a death or serious injury in the family).

Mobile Phones, PDAs and Laptop Computers
Faculty members expect you to turn off your cell phones during cohort and seminar. Seminar leaders will not tolerate ringing or vibrating phones, text messaging, or instant messaging during any NCLC 130 activities. If your seminar leader allows laptops or PDAs in cohort or seminar, please be aware that cohort and seminar are not appropriate places for the use of instant messaging, text messaging, or Internet surfing. If you abuse the privilege of bringing your PDA or laptop to class by engaging in non-class-related activities, that privilege will be discontinued.

Honor Policy
We take the Honor Code, as stated in the George Mason University Undergraduate Catalog, very seriously in the New Century College learning communities. It is your responsibility to study it carefully and ask your professors for further explanation of any part you do not understand. University faculty members are obliged to refer the names of students who may have violated the Honor Code to the Honor Committee, which treats such cases very seriously.

Plagiarism
According to the University catalog, plagiarism includes the following:

Be particularly careful to credit work through citations. In addition to direct quotations, you must also provide an in-text citation and an entry in your list of works cited for paraphrases and summaries of opinions or factual information you did not know before. The only exception to this rule is information termed “general knowledge,” information that is widely known to the population at-large. Please be cautious in applying the general knowledge exception. When in any doubt, cite!

If you decide to use another person’s ideas, you must either quote the idea verbatim or completely rephrase the ideas in your own words and voice. But you must still cite the original source of the information (in-text and in your list of works cited) even if you have rephrased it. In class and in seminar discussions, you should also acknowledge the ideas you have acquired from others. Please give credit where credit is due, whether to a family member or friend with whom you have discussed the readings, to a seminar colleague or a group member, or to a faculty member or guest lecturer.

In academic work, you should follow a standardized format for your in-text citations and lists of works cited. (For example, the formats created by the Modern Language Association [MLA] or the American Psychological Association [APA]).

Please Remember:  As we value academic integrity in NCLC 130, we do expect you to provide complete in-text citations and a list of works cited or works referenced.  If you submit an assignment with incomplete or no in-text citations and/or an incomplete or missing list of works cited or works referenced, you will lose one full letter grade on the assignment.

Appropriate Collaboration
In NCLC 130, you will complete some major projects and in-class assignments as a group. The professional world increasingly rewards employees who possess sophisticated team-building and team-participation skills. These group projects form part of the first-year NCC program that challenges students to collaborate successfully in work groups engaged in problem-solving and project development.

The major group projects constitute a significant portion of your final grade. Academic integrity is critical. Each member of the group should participate fully in the formal collaboration and feel equally responsible for the results. Names of all the participants should appear on the work. If a group member does not participate in completing the project, his or his name should not appear on the project.

We have designed other assignments (for example, the integrative projects) as individual projects. You may discuss your ideas informally with others and receive feedback from peers on your drafts. However, it is not appropriate to ask someone else to rewrite, revise or finish your final paper. It is not appropriate for you to allow others access to your computer files or to allow others who have not already written their essays to read yours “for ideas.”

If your name appears on an assignment, your professor has the right to expect that you have submitted your own, original, unaided work. When others have significantly contributed to your research, development and writing on an individual assignment, you must recognize their contribution and credit them in your paper. You should follow three fundamental principles at all times:

No grade is important enough to justify cheating, which incurs serious consequences, including suspension from the university. If you feel unusual pressure or anxiety about your grade in this or any other learning community, please do talk immediately to your seminar leader or a member of the Counseling Center staff. The university provides a range of services to help with text anxiety, writing skills, study skills and related concerns.

Learning Differences
If you have a learning or physical difference that may affect your academic work, you must furnish appropriate documentation to the Office of Disability Services (See Learning Resources below). If you qualify for accommodation, the ODS staff will give you a form detailing appropriate accommodations for your instructor. In addition to providing your professors with the appropriate form, please take the initiative and discuss accommodations with them at the beginning of the semester and as needed during the term. Faculty learn from you the most effective ways to assist you. If you have contacted the Office of Disability Services and are waiting to hear from a counselor, please tell your seminar leader.

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Learning Resources
Writing Center (http://writingcenter.gmu.edu/)
703-993-1200, Robinson A, Room 114.
(There also is a satellite office on the ground floor of Enterprise)
The University Writing Center provides, at no charge, tutors who will help you brainstorm, structure, revise and edit written work (and help you compile and check your citation of sources!). Although the Writing Center may sometimes accommodate walk-in appointments, you are more likely to see a tutor at a time convenient to you, and your assignment deadline, if you telephone in advance for an appointment. You may also consult the Writing Center online. For further information, email wcenter@gmu.edu.

Counseling Services (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/csdc)
703-993-2380, SUB I, Room 364.
Professional counselors provide individual and group sessions for personal development and assistance with emotional and relational issues. In addition, the Learning Services Program (703-993-2999) offers academic skill-building workshops and a tutor referral service.

Office of Disability Services (ODS) (http://ods.gmu.edu/)
703-993-2474, SUB I Room 234.
The staff of ODS assists students with learning differences or physical conditions which may affect their academic work.

Learning Services (http://www.gmu.edu/departments/csdc/ls.htm)
Learning Services provides a variety of experience based learning opportunities through which students explore a wide range of academic concerns. Study skills workshops and individual study skills counseling provide learning experiences to improve academic skills.
Student Technology Assistance and Resource Center (STAR) (http://media.gmu.edu/)
703-993-1430, Johnson Center, Room 229.

Center for Leadership and Community Engagement (http://www.gmu.edu/student/csl/)
703-993-2900, Enterprise Hall, Room 442.
The Center for Leadership and Community Engagement promotes positive change and civic responsibility by combining academic study, leadership development and direct community service. CLCE is your resource at Mason for leadership development and service-learning initiatives.

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Important Dates



First day of classes

20 October

Last day to drop NCLC 130 with no tuition liability

29 October

Last day to add NCLC 130

29 October

Last day to drop NCLC 130 with 33% tuition liability

31 October

Last day to drop NCLC 130 with 67% tuition liability

4 November

Last day to drop NCLC 130

4 November

Thanksgiving Recess

26 – 30 November

If you have a question about registration, please make an appointment with an advisor by contacting the NCC front desk. For further information, visit the Registrar's Office, North Chesapeake Module 1 (behind Fenwick Library) or check the web site. The regular office hours of the Registrar's Office are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5 pm, and Tuesday evenings until 8 pm.