Assignment Instructions
Health Informatics is a growing and collaborative field, and there is no better way to learn than to interact with your peers, to participate in one another’s project studies, and to see the variety of approaches taken by your classmates to the class’s assignments. Thus, participation is required. However, we understand that requiring participation has a tendency to incite inauthentic participation. Our goal with the participation policy is to give students enough ways to fulfill their participation credit in the way that is most natural and useful to them.
There are a few ways to earn participation points. Our goal is for the participation policy to be organic. If you are active on Piazza (e.g. posting high-quality topics or comments a couple times a week), complete your labs, complete case studies and survey tasks, you shouldn’t ever need to worry about the participation policy. We expect that for the majority of students, you’ll earn your participation points without really trying.
The following are the ways you may earn participation credit:
- Completing your Labs on Time (22pts)
- Completing your Case Studies on Time (8pts)
- Completing the Course Surveys on Time (5pts)
Grading Information
Your number of participation points will be averaged out of 35 possible points and included as 35% of your final average. Earning 35 points or above will give you 100% of the possible participation credit.
Case Studies
The assessments are intended to provide depth to the course material in the aspect of real world application. Students will have eight case studies during the semester and they will be hosted in the Quiz section on Canvas. Case Studies are comprised of a set of questions based on a case study. Campus students are required to attend live lectures on campus and in person, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Online students, are not required, but are able to join these live lectures via YouTube Live. A link to the YouTube live sessions will be provided in the case study instructions. Additionally, the slide deck corresponding to the lecture will be added to the case study instructions.
Students must respond to the discussion questions related to the cases via Canvas – this will be submitted for a grade. Discussion threads will be posted to Piazza to allow students to further discuss the cases with course mates.
You may take the assessment anytime during the week it is due, but once started you will have up to 2 attempts and will receive the higher score of the two. Note that there may be opportunities for “stretch assignments” to help supplement missed points.
Course Surveys
Since this is our first offering of the remake of the course, we need your feedback to keep innovating. We will have a total of five course surveys throughout the semester for students to complete. We’ll use the results of these surveys to develop an understanding of who is taking the class, find common interests, identify student expectations and feedback on the course’s progression, so filling out the surveys is critical.
- Team Matching Survey
- Start-of-Course Survey
- Quarter-Course Survey
- Mid-Course Survey
- End-of-Course Survey
Each of the surveys will be issued via Canvas. They are to be completed and submitted by each student via Canvas. Each survey is worth 1 participation point, as part of the overall participation grade.
CIOS Evaluations
At the end of the term, students will have the opportunity to submit a CIOS Evaluation of the course. Although, its not required, nor part of the student grade, we HIGHLY encourage students to participate.
“CIOS is the institute’s way of systematically monitoring how classes are going, how instructors are doing, etc. While individual classes might gather feedback on their own, CIOS is the tool for monitoring that goes beyond the professors themselves. That makes it doubly important for programs like the OMSCS, which are new and experimental: CIOS is our best tool for understanding what works and what doesn’t.” – David Joyner
So, please complete CIOS! 🙂