Timothy C. Johnston . Homework directions and hints. Practice Questions

    It is always a good idea not to wait until the last minute to complete homework.  Computers crash, networks go down, and printers jam at the worst possible moment.  You can always turn in an assignment early.  Homework assignments are designed to encourage you to read the chapter and understand key concepts, and are an important source of exam questions.  Here are suggested procedures for completing homework:

Practice Questions (PQ) are multiple choice questions from the textbook test bank.  

1.  Read the chapter.

2.  Try the practice questions "offline," before you take the BlackBoard quiz. You can find a printable version of the PQ online in a form that you can see anytime. If you can’t find them on the BlackBoard site go to http://www.utm.edu/~johnston/webpage.htm.

3.  If you are unsure of any of your answers, look up the correct answer in the textbook.

4.  After you are confident in your answers, log in at BlackBoard (http://blackboard.utm.edu). Normally a student's BlackBoard username is the same as their student email username. This is: first 3 characters of their first name plus middle initial plus first 4 characters of their last name.  For example John F Smith's username would be johfsmit.  A student's password is the last 4 digits of their Student ID number plus the two-digit birth month plus the last two digits of the birth year. For example a student with ID # 123-45-6789 born on 08/16/73 would have a password of 67890873.

5.  The Practice Questions quiz should be under the "Assignments" button. Open the quiz and select your answers.  Remember to hit the "submit" button when you finish the quiz.  (If you cannot find the quiz on BlackBoard, it may be that you are looking after the time due and the quiz is "invisible" and your chance has passed).

REMEMBER that you get only one chance to take a quiz online.  Do not hit the "back" button on your browser, and do not do anything else while taking a quiz.  I recommend using the scroll bar on the browser window to scroll the quiz, and not using the up-down arrow keys on the keyboard or the scroll wheel on your mouse. If your quiz session is interrupted, you will see a message like "you have already attempted this quiz" when you try to take the quiz again.  If this happens and you can reach me in time for me to reset the quiz before the due date, I will. If the quiz is not reset in time then you can “take a break” and turn the quiz up to one week late for full credit. You can do this twice per term. You must type your answers in a Word file and submit the file to me by the late due date via the Digital Dropbox in BlackBoard. Your score will show up in your gradebook as a “break.”

6.  BlackBoard will give you the score of your quiz, and the correct answers.  Write down the correct answers on a hardcopy of the Practice Questions for later study.  You can confirm that your score was recorded in the online grade book by clicking the "Tools" button and then "Check Grade." 

7. NOTE that Practice Questions are not a “study guide” where “study guide” is defined as everything that can be on a test. There will be some questions from the PQ on the exams, but there will be other questions that are similar but not exactly the same, and there may be completely new questions on major topics in the textbook. If you study only the PQ and do not read the textbook then you risk a poor grade on the exam.