ASTR 151 Course Syllabus

Instructor: Dr. James Sternberg (jsternbe@tennessee.edu)
Office Hours: TR 2:00 PM (on Zoom) or when requested if I can make it.
Room: Online

Recitation times:

Online - Asynchronous

Text:  There is no official textbook, but chapters from “Openstax Astronomy” will be available.  The entire textbook can be found here: https://openstax.org/books/astronomy-2e/pages/1-introduction

Course Description: “Study of Earth’s nearest astronomical neighbors, including the sun, planets, asteroids, and comets. Seasons, solar and lunar eclipses, motion of the planets in the night sky, recent planetary space probe discoveries, development of our modern understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system and its place in the universe, discovery of extrasolar planets in distant solar systems. A minimum of mathematical analysis.”  This course satisfies a general education credit.

Disability Accommodations:   Anyone taking the course who needs accommodations for a disability should contact me privately.  I will make any accommodations that I can.  You should also register with the Office of Disability Services at 865-974-6087.

Important things you need to know: Summer courses move quickly since they are the same as a regular semester course but taught  in roughly half the time.  In order to be successful, it will be important to thoroughly read all of the assigned material ahead of time and review the material outside of class hours.  You will also need to get started early on the homework.  Although this course (like any major summer class) will be a lot of work, I hope you will experience some of the excitement of understanding some of the rules that govern the universe and gain an appreciation of their beauty.

This summer, ASTR 151  will be taught online. The lectures and lecture notes will be posted online in Canvas and the homework will be assigned in online.  I will also schedule zoom meetings throughout the week either as my own office hours.  I think that this interactive element is often missing from online classes, and I hope that this helps

Grading: Your grade in the class will depend on your homework, midterm grades and your final exam grade. 

The grading scale is as follows:

Exams: (45% of the total course)

            There will be three midterm exams and one final exam. Each midterm will potentially compose 15% of your total grade. The CUMULATIVE final exam will compose 45% of your course Each exam will have an appeal period of one week after it is returned to the class – you must ask about grading or other concerns about the test during this time.  There will be an opportunity to correct your tests for partial credit to improve your score.  Because the final is at the very end of the summer semester, there will not be time to do this for the final exam.

Homework (30% of the total course grade):

Of your total course grade, 30% will be based on homework.  There will be easier “engagement” exercises every week to make sure that everyone is keeping up with the course as well as more involved regular homework assignments for each unit.  The engagement exercises will be due at the end of each week.  The more complicated will have a week to finish.

Discussions (15% of the total course grade):

There will be discussions throughout this course on Packback.  These are auto-graded (using AI analysis), but I will be actively monitoring these discussions to make sure that the auto-grading is working fairly.