Assignments

You will carry out assignments related to specific subject areas in the course. Assignments are designed to balance three learning components: basic skill development, understanding lecture concepts, and practicing real work done by river conservationists.

You are highly encouraged to discuss assignments with other students in the class. The goal here is to work together on field observation, field conditions interpretation, and field data collection. However, once each perosn has all the data, then they have to carry out the work to process that data on their own and wirte up their own assignments to turn in. Students can discuss those topics but not verbatum state what they are writing, so eacxh perosn has to do their own critical thinking and wriitng. 

• You are permitted to work together on field data collection.
• You are share raw spreadsheets, graphs, tables, field notes, etc.
• You are not permitted to share your final spreadhseets, assignemnt write-ups, or final answers for assignments.

You are required by UC Davis to have your own personal computer and the required software to do the assignments. In this class it is highly recommended that you use the MS Excel spreadsheet program, and it is available for free to you through UCD as explained on the course home page.

In a non-pandemic year, LAWR has a few computers available to students. Although some assignments can be done with equivalent programs such as the freeware OpenOffice, I cannot guarantee that the high-end tools and add-ons in Excel are equally available in other programs, so my advice is to download MS Office.

Please be sure that the following add-ons are available on your copy of MS Excel: Data Analysis toolpak and Solver. In the PC 2010 version of Excel, click on the Data tab and look for both items. If you do not see it, go to the help menu and look up how to add the "add-ins". The Mac 2016 version has these tools too, and you add them by going to the top menu and selecting Tools --> Excel Add-ins... Search online for further instructions as needed.

Finally, if you have never used Excel before, then I encourage you to do some kind of beginner tutorial to get yourself started in the basics of using a spreadsheet. I am available in my office help with some tutoring, but you will need to supplement that with practice on your own. The use of MS Office as a whole is simply one of the basic skill sets you need to be employable in the 21st century. I guarantee that this class will help you reach a higher level of usage. 

• Assignments will be graded based on the number of points specificed for each and they will be returned to you promptly after all students have submitted them.

Late Policy: For full credit, homework must be turned in by class time on the due date. You have 3 "grace days" for late homework. That is, you can turn in a total of two homework assignments a day late, one homework two days late, etc. Weekends count as one day. Assignments turned in late without "grace credit" will be penalized by 10% per day. Homework late by more than 5 days will not be graded. Exceptions require either prior arrangement or doctor-validated medical excuse.