History of Science Online - Course Info - Time tips - Semester Schedule - Weekly Assignments - Timeline - Projects - Course Info: HSCI 3013 - section 995 - Fall 2008

Communication Essentials

Daily Communication is essential to this class:

• Announcements and Calendar
  • The "Announcements" and "Calendar" links are found in the upper left corner of every page. Don't memorize these two urls; just use the links. See them up there? Just to the right of the "HOME" link? Try both of them now!
  • Announcements: Check announcements every weekday for general updates about the course from me. Do not begin coursework for any given day without first checking these announcements. I will post reminders, revised instructions, clarifications, answers to other students' questions, tips or corrections. After the first week or two of the class, I will NOT email announcements, so you'll have to get in the habit of checking the announcements using this course blog. If you fail to look at the announcements one day, be sure to go back the next time and see what announcements you missed for the previous days. Don't miss them!
  • Calendar: There's also a calendar with important dates including main ones for deadlines and holidays from the academic calendar. On the calendar, if the description of any event is too large to read, just click any event to see the complete note. You may subscribe to the calendar if you have an ics-compliant calendar application such as iCal.

• Sending a message to me
  • When you send an email to me about this class, please include the number 3013 in the subject line of the email (for example, "3013 homework question"). Without the 3013 in the subject line, the email will not automatically sort into my class mailbox, and I might not notice it in my regular inbox. If you use the email links here at the website (including the link to my name located at the extreme top of each page), the email will automatically be created with a subject line of "3013". Send email to either my OU account (kmagruder@ou.edu) or my personal account (kvmagruder@mac.com). You should have a response to any email you send to me within 24 hours. I read email in both accounts at the same times and places, so either one should work; if you don't hear from me within 24 hours, resend the same message to both accounts.
  • Pager: Do not leave messages for me using the Desire2Learn pager. I have this feature turned off, and I will never receive them.
  • Email attachments: Microsoft Word is not required for this course. Because of the risk of passing on Windows viruses through Microsoft Word documents, if you send me an email with a Microsoft Word document attached, I will delete it without reading it.
  • Please do not telephone me at home during the evenings unless it is an emergency. Thanks!

• Finding me offline
  • You may not ever need to find me offline, but if you do, I'm usually on campus in either the History of Science Department (PHSC 621) or the History of Science Collections (BL 521). Call ahead if you want to make an appointment, or just trust to luck and drop by.
  • History of Science Department: PHSC 621 (the "blender" building).
  • History of Science Collections: BL 380 (Bizzell Library). Look for me here most of the time. 325-2741. Please make an appointment if possible.

• Receiving Email
• Check your email for specific communications from me about grades, quizzes, your web project, etc. I will use email to respond to requests you send to me via email. The return address you will see on email messages from me may be either my university address (kmagruder@ou.edu) or my personal address (kvmagruder@mac.com).
• OU email: All of the email sent by the OU registrar, the College of Arts and Sciences online coordinator, or the email sent for other official OU announcements, goes to your OU email address, so it is essential that you receive your OU email.
• After the first week of class, I will not send general course announcements by email to the entire class, so it is imperative to establish the habit of checking the course Announcements every day you work in this course.

Which Email client should I use?

1. Web browser. You may use your web browser, if you like: Everyone at OU now has an IMAP or Exchange email account which you can access at http://exchange.ou.edu. This web-based email does not display ads and offers unlimited storage space.

2. Configure an email program to read your OU email. In addition to or instead of web-based email, you can also use a dedicated email application like Outlook or Netscape or Thunderbird or Mail to check your email and save messages on your computer. You can find information about different email program options at the IT Support Center, http://support.ou.edu. If you do not already have an email application that you enjoy, check out Thunderbird: this free mail reader is part of the Mozilla open source project like Composer (the app we will use for building web pages). Thunderbird works similarly to Outlook but without the user hassles of dealing with advertisements and spam, and Thunderbird's default settings are more secure than Outlook's because it won't automatically run scripts attached to incoming emails.

NOTE: If you use the OU Exchange mail system and especially if you use Outlook with Exchange mail, some of your friends may be unable to receive attachments that you send to them. Unless they, too, are within the Exchange system, your attachments will be sent to them in Microsoft's proprietary (closed) format called TNEF, instead of in open, standard formats such as jpg, txt, etc. This is the problem that is going on when a recipient of one of your emails tells you they received an attachment as a "winmail.dat." To fix it, you need to change your email settings in Outlook. Here are instructions for how to change these settings:

1. Cornell University (try this first)
2. Microsoft (a bit more complicated)

May I forward my email to a non-OU account?

WARNING: Email forwarding does not always work! Let's say you are using Hotmail -- if your Hotmail inbox fills up and email gets returned to sender, you could miss important class information. I will make no special efforts to deliver the email to you if it is returned to sender.

What if I use AOL? It is STRONGLY recommended that you use your OU email account for this class and that you DO NOT FORWARD your email to another address. Emails sent from Desire2Learn and other University systems often bounce back as undeliverable from America Online. THE INSTRUCTOR WILL TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOUR EMAIL IS RETURNED AS UNDELIVERABLE. Every semester, there are numerous problems with email being returned as undeliverable because students have their email forwarded to other email accounts, usually AOL. This is a very serious problem, so you should definitely think twice before forwarding your email. If you decide that you do want to forward your OU email, despite these serious risks, go to http://account.ou.edu and follow the instructions there for email forwarding. But send yourself an email every day throughout the course - test it daily to see if forwarding actually keeps working!

 

	HSCI 3013. History of Science to 17th century Kerry Magruder, 2004-08 Report typos or broken links Many thanks to Mythology and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.	Search course websites:
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