I strongly encourage all students to get feedback from me about their study guide answers. Most students do this by typing up their answers and sending them to me via email. In a typical semester, I exchange over 2000 emails with about 200 different students regarding this course, enough to print out around 1500 pages of 9-point, single-spaced text. This is comparable in length to "The Lord of the Rings," which is a much better read.

If you plan to seek help via email this semester, here are some basic guidelines to remember.

(1) - I am often deluged with requests for help in the few days before the exam, and it has gotten bad enough that I worry that I will not be able to help everyone who asks. To encourage people to spread out their work instead of cramming for the exam at the last moment, and to make sure I can provide timely responses to everyone, here is the rule: You may send at most TEN study guide answers in a given calendar day for me to check.

(2) - Please try to avoid sending attachments when possible. If you have to attach small diagrams to help answer some questions, that's fine. Some people answer the study guide by creating web pages for answers and diagrams, then they just send me a link. If you are just answering the questions as text, please just send a plain text email and avoid any Word attachments. This saves us both time and ensures no data will be lost. You can copy from a Word document and paste the text into your email. I will quote it all when I reply.

(3) - I will almost always respond with feedback within 72 hours (usually 24 hours). Sometimes I take a bit longer over the weekend. If I don't respond within about 3 days, you should email me again to ensure we have a good connection. If you resend any emails verbatim, please clearly label them as "RE-SENT" so that I don't respond to the same email twice.

(4) - Please understand that sometimes my responses will be brief and to the point. I will not pull any punches if your answers are wrong or off the mark. Please don't take offense if I tell you that your answer is wrong or needs work. I never respond insultingly to email, and I never intend to make anyone feel bad about their work. I appreciate every single response you send because it tells me you are at least putting forth an effort.

(5) - If I say "Correct." in response to your answer, that means you really don't need to change anything. If I say "Ok." that means your answer is ok and would get full credit on the exam, but the wording or content is marginal and could conceivably be improved. If I say "so far, so good" or "this is fine so far", that means that you answer is correct but incomplete. You need to answer the rest of the question or other parts of the question.

(6) - If you send me a blank answer to a question or respond to a question with "I don't know." or something equivalent, I will typically not provide you with any feedback. My thinking is that if you haven't gotten the information you need to even make an educated guess at the answer from lecture notes, the book, help from other students or other resources I've offered, then it really won't help your understanding for me to type up yet another reworded explanation of the same thing. You can only do a good job on the exam if you understand the concept, not if you memorize something I've written, so I won't generally provide feedback at all unless you come part of the way toward understanding yourself. I need to know that you are making that effort.

(7) - Please answer study guide questions IN YOUR OWN WORDS. (This is essential when we are stuck in online-only mode and I have to have tight rules against plagiarism for our exams!) Please avoid copying and pasting from another source. There are two reasons for this: First, if you are answering a question like "describe what causes the greenhouse effect" from a reliable website like NASA's website describing the greenhouse effect, and you simply copy and paste the text from that website, then you are wasting time for both of us. We both know what you are sending me will be correct, but I do not believe doing this is going to help you study for the exam.

Second, when you translate a detailed discussion from lecture or some other source into your own words, this helps you learn it. The act of synthesizing an explanation in your own words will help you remember it. Also, by seeing how you have translated an answer into language you are comfortable with, I can determine how well you truly understand the material. If you are copying and pasting verbatim from another source, I have no idea if you understand the material. And understanding the material, for you, is the entire reason this study guide process exists.

Finally on this point: If you are considering giving your completed study guide to another student who hasn't done much work or attended many classes, or if you are on the other end of this transaction and are getting a completed study guide from someone else: Please stop to consider your actions. In my opinion, while such behavior is not academically dishonest in the literal sense, it certainly goes against the spirit of the rules about academic dishonesty. It is certainly unethical and undermines the structure of the course I have gone to great lengths to design and execute.

Ask yourself: "Why does Dr. Ingram not provide us with the answers to these questions? Surely he knows the answers. Surely he would save himself enormous amounts of time replying to thousands of emails per semester by just giving everyone the answers up front!" So why don't I do that? PLEASE ask yourself and seriously consider the answer before you give away your own answers or you use answers provided for you from another source. I run my course this way in good faith, genuinely believing it is the best way for you to learn, even though it is a lot of work for me. I ask you to respect that and act in good faith in return.

(8) - These study guide exchanges between us are meant to help you perform better on the exam, but sometimes I screw up and say something is "correct" when it isn't. Therefore, if you write an answer on an exam that is substantially similar to an answer you have sent to me for a particular concept, and if I told you in an email "correct" or gave it a red check-mark during office hours, then I will give you credit for getting that question right. In my view, your getting that answer wrong is my fault, so I will be glad to fix it.

Once I fix an answer like this, you will be expected to get the concept correct if it shows up again on the final exam, even if I made a mistake in our email exchange since we will now have a written record of the correct explanation. I only make this offer on YOUR study guide answers for YOUR exam. I consider study guide answers "yours" if they come from your email account or have your name on them as part of a group. You cannot use a mistake I have made on someone else's study guide to argue for credit on one of your own exam answers.