Howdy to all on-line government students from your ole "Online Professor" Gary,

Welcome to my online American Federal Government class. We are kinda bursting at the seams, but I'm glad you made it into the class. Because students are still being added to a new section, it’s possible that you could receive this letter twice. (Maybe 10 or 15 times) If so, just disregard. 

If you go to my web site your will discover that all of the tools that you will need are in one place. The RSU Online (WebCT) website has many links to my website with duplicate links to each unit of work, but you can disregard the RSU site completely for the duration of this course. You will discover that the “Work Schedule” calendar on my web has all the due dates and links to all the assignments so it will be easy for you to work down through the Units of work on work schedule on my web site. If you have any questions at all just email me at:

 rutledge@garyrutledge.com

 The course is self-paced, in the sense that you can work ahead, as long as you complete each unit on time. Do not just take quizzes or do any one activity by itself for several units. Complete each unit of work before moving on to the next. Otherwise, we follow the same schedule as RSU's traditional classes.  Follow the calendar on the work schedule page of my Web Site for all due dates. THIS IS THE BIBLE! EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT WHAT AND WHEN IS ON THE WORK SCHEDULE of my web. Open each unit of work on or before the due date on the calendar and go right down the list of learning tool links, clicking on each one, and doing the reading, threads, writing assignments and quizzes. I have opened up all of the assignments so that you may look ahead and even submit work ahead of time if your desire. You will notice several learning tools in each unit of work. Always do the reading assignment for each unit, and use as many of the other learning tool links as you find helpful. Some you may not use in every unit, or you many use most of them all the time. Try all of them to see what works for you.

Work within each unit may be done in any sequence you choose. You will probably want to do the readings and some of the learning tools, and then post your initial discussion posting, then complete the quizzes and written web assignments, before returning to the discussion forum and posting additional responses to other student's threads. Try it different ways and do which ever works best for you.

You may want to "Bookmark" or place a link to my website on your desktop so that you can go directly to it during this semester. Spend as much time as you can bang around on my site until you have a good idea where everything is, especially the Work Schedule page and all it’s due dates.

You will be hearing from me a lot, especially at first, so keep an eye peeled for my e-mails. We need to make sure that we can communicate with each other via the Internet, so please send me a "howdy" message as soon as you can.  Tell me about yourself in about 50 words (never a penalty for writing too much). Tell me about your goals, experiences, likes, or dislikes? Tell me about your family or anything you want to talk about.

Use: (rutledge@garyrutledge.com)

I will respond to all emails, so if you don't get an email back from me within 48 hours (Usually must quicker) try again. For emergencies, phone me at 918-343-7800. If you live close to the Claremore campus, you are always welcome to come by my office. (303 Prep Hall) If you have difficulty communicating through normal channels, try another e-mail system. I check my mail on rutledge@garyrutledge.com more frequently than my RSU faculty email address) I post problems and suggestions on the  "Announcements" page (click on my web site garyrutledge.com, then American Federal government, then Work Schedule, then Announcements for the online course) where you will find information if I get email back as undeliverable to your email account. I will be sending all email to your RSU email account so check this account often to make sure to get all messages from me. If you have an email address that you prefer and check more often than your RSU email account, you can let me know. That’s just between you and I since we are supposed to send email to your RSU account.

As for me, I have a beautiful wife with whom I spend most of my time. We are raising our 18-year-old granddaughter, and we have 6 year old grandson that visits several times a week. You might hear about my family from time to time because I am at that age where I bore people to death with endless personal stories. I fly my old Mooney airplane, ride an old Harley Softail, ski behind an old boat, and drive an old Vette Stingray. (Everything is old like me, but still going strong) I have had three separate careers; Computers, jet aircraft, and now higher education. I just can’t seem to make up my mind what I want to do with my life. I have degrees from TCC, OSU, OU, TU, and my doctorate is from OSU, so I just root for everyone at games

We have a lot of work to do in this course, and I hope you don't get discouraged in the beginning. It gets much easier as we go along. I will not pay too much attention to the due dates of assignments during the first week or so because there is a lot of stuff I want you to read (like this rambling letter) and it may throw you behind a little.

Take the little pre-test on the work schedule as soon as you can. It doesn’t affect your grade, but it lets me know that that part of the web is working. Please send me the first Web Assignments (chapter wrap-ups, memos, little essays, papers, or what ever you want to call them) as soon as you can so that I can read and grade them and give you some idea what you can expect grade-wise. Be sure that each one is at least a couple of pages in length. (about 550 words, double spaced) Web assignments should always be submitted to me with the web assignment link provided for that assignment (not by email, and never an attachment of any kind).

Write about the subject of each web assignment in context of your own experience, summarize the information from the book, lecture notes found on my website, and any contemporary sources from the news or internet. These little papers should not be just your opinion or about your feelings. This is alright for an introduction paragraph, but all should be supported with references to at least a couple of sources. You don’t have to provide a formal works cited page, but mentioned where you got your source in the text itself. There is no right or wrong response on any of these assignments. Any position that you can support is great.

In addition to getting a quick reply from me after any e-mail that you send, as you submit web assignments and take quizzes, you should get confirmations in a few seconds after submitting an assignment or taking a quiz, and you should see a thank-you page appear after submitting a web assignment. If not, you probably didn’t complete the document transmission.

I will be sending information pretty often and covering some of the technical aspects of the course for a while as we get things sorted out. The web assignment system and the Internet are pretty reliable, but some times bad stuff happens. Keep a back up of all written work on your computer just in case something unexpected happens. I will back up everything on my end too.

I will e-mail you a personal ID Number, ZAP Number, Password, and username for use with quizzes, web assignment, threaded discussions right away, so be watching and save it for the duration of the course. You will also need your ID Number to identify your grades which may be found on my web site under the “Grades” button on the home page. As soon as you receive your pen number (ID Number) from me, take the Pre-test (link is at the top of the first unit of work). There is no grade for the pretest and no preparation is necessary. It is only used to confirm that your pen number and password are working and to give me an idea of where we are as a class in the study of government.

I will publish grades on my website every 24 hours (except for the threaded discussions which take a little longer) in order for you to see how you stand at any given time. You can go to the grade page on my web and find a summary of your grades with a letter grade representing the work that you have done up to that point. Be aware that different assignments have different values, so the average grade in the far right column is a little misleading. Your grades will be found next to the personal pen number that I send you. At the top of each column is an abbreviated description of that item. (AD W = approaching Democracy web Assignment, AD Q = Approaching Democracy Quiz, ConW = Constitution Web Assignment, ConQ = Constitution Q, etc.)  With the exception of the threaded discussion assignments, (on which I wait a few more days for all thread responses are submitted for a given unit) I will try to stay very current with your grades.

Grades will appear on the grade page pretty much in the order that they were assigned. (Pretty simple Huh) If you do not wish to have your grades on my personal website, you may let me know and I will not make them available on an Internet basis. Speaking of grades, this course tends to have pretty high grades for those that do all the assignments, and pretty low grades for those that don’t. It’s easy to get behind and this causes all kinds of bad things begin to happen, so follow the work schedule page and its due dates as your bible. I hope you will quickly get into the routine of this course and give it your all. Those that finish, tend to have better outcomes than in my traditional in-classroom classes. Test scores also indicate that they learn more too.

You can (and probably should) still prepare your assignments with your word processor and copy and paste them into the web assignment text box just as if you were copying them into the text of an e-mail. I know these messes up your pretty margins and formatting, but that's ok for the stuff you will be sending to me. I am much more interested in the content than anything else. Make sure that your original document has the required number of pages for each web assignment, (at least 2 pages, double spaced, 1 inch margins) Don't be concerned with how small it becomes when you copy and paste it to the web assignment pages. And, you don't need to email me and tell me that your document looked so much bigger before it was converted to HTML. I know! I know! Sorry.

The midterm quiz and the final quiz, are all linked just like the regular unit work. The work schedule pages should allow you to simply click on a link, bring up the appropriate assignment page with a subject question to write about in the text box, or bring up an online exam for you to take and submit to me for that unit. If a grade does not appear within a day or two, e-mail me at:

rutledge@garyrutledge.com

Use this address for all communications with me. Send no email with an attachment. No email with an attachment will be opened. (Too dangerous) By the way, you need an RSU email account to take my course, at least to get started. Sorry! This is new since we started using the WebCT thing, and communications that I originate will go to this address. As far as other email address you may use to send work and messages to me, they are fine. You can submit work and messages to me from any computer. It does not matter if you use several different computers or servers, when I respond to your emails; I just hit "REPLY" and send my response to whatever address your message came from. If we have any difficulty communicating, the first thing to, is to try your RSU email account if you are not using it already

By the way, have you noticed? No proctored exams or testing centers. Everything is on-line and you can do assignments and take quizzes on your own schedule. (As long as you meet the due dates) Just submit the stuff into the web assignment links, Take the online quizzes, and post to the threaded discussion forum and you are done.

Well that should get us going. Don't have a heart attack at the reading assignments, web assignments, threads, and quizzes. Once you get into the rhythm of the course, it really becomes easy. Don't forget! I am as close as your e-mail. I usually check my mail several times a day.

Send me that "Howdy" e-mail and tell me a little about you. Sit back and get ready to learn a bunch of stuff and have fun at the same time. This is going to go by so fast you won't believe it.

Have a super semester, Gary R.