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. 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, I have this rule: You may send at most 10 study guide answers in a given calendar day for me to check.

If you wish to send 10 just before midnight and 10 just after midnight, that's fine. If you wish to cooperate with a friend and send 10 from your account and 10 from your friend's account, that's fine, as long as your friend is enrolled in this course. If you send me more than 10 answers in a given day to check, I will simply read and respond to the first 10 you send.

(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 usually respond with feedback within 48 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.

(4) - Please understand that sometimes my responses will be curt. 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. Sometimes, that sentiment can get lost in an email message and you may feel that I'm not being respectful when I give you advice on improving your answers, etc. I assure you, though, that I am *always* respectful when responding to students. Our mutual goal is for you to get a good grade on the exam, and sometimes in order to do that, I have to give you some tough marching orders, tell you that your answer is incorrect, tell you that your wording is confusing, etc. I assure you that I am really only trying to act in your best interests.

(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) - Part of the "deal" I am making with you on the study guide is that by checking your study guide, I am telling you that it is all right to put that same answer on the test if I ok it in an email or in person. Therefore, if you write something on your exam that answers the same question as in your study guide and is something I already checked and said was right, you will get full credit. Sometimes, I don't read answers carefully enough and end up saying "ok" when an answer is really wrong, and that's not your fault, so I will give you full credit for writing down pre-checked answers on the test, even if they are wrong.

But I will only do this if the answers came from you. If you and a friend are sending in questions as a group, then you must indicate that in your email in order for me to consider that as being a "checked answer" from both of you. Otherwise, I will only consider an answer to be checked for the person who sent the email.