Welcome to CIT120
- You are responsible to read the material beforehand, not after the class discussion. Not reading the material will result in a poor grade, disappoint your fellow students since you will not be able to participate in group work or class discussion, and make this class more boring not only for yourself but for the other students. As a number of educational technologist are hawking – “Who owns the learning done in a class?”
- Go to course’s Blackboard entry - clc.blackboard.com
- Bring up syllabus
- Books
- Introduction to Computers - this book is critical for the course since the vast majority of test questions are based on the material
- Microsoft Office 2010 – if you know all components of Office, you could probably get away without buying the book, but watch out for the Access component. Most students are unfamiliar with MS Access.
- CourseMate – optional but strongly suggested
- CourseMate provides supplemental material and tools to help you learn the terminology of Information Technology. The test questions are mostly based on knowing the terms found in the chapter.
- Need key from book if bought through CLC bookstore
- or if using a different copy of the book and you want to use CourseMate to help improve your grade then you can purchase a CourseMate key from
With a CourseMate key you can now login into CourseMate – view video from another school to help you login.
Your key, along with the Course Key for this particular section CM-9781133114598-0000037, will let you access the supplemental tools and material for this course.
- Syllabus test due by 1-29 at 11:59 PM
- Chapter work
- Each chapter has a pretest – must read chapter before we start covering it in class. The pretest is available a week before we start the chapter material.
- There will be a short discussion about questions in chapter material and I will introduce some additional material. This additional material will be on the chapter’s posttest.
- Classroom work
- Section 1 and 3 will have classroom projects to work on
- Section 2 will have more classroom discussion
- Each chapter will have a posttest. It must be taken within 3 days of finishing the chapter material in class.
- Pretest and posttest are taken outside of class but are timed tests. Running over time loses points unless you are registered as needing extra time by the Office of Student Disabilities.
- Improving chapter tests grades
- If not happy with test scores, you can write a paper to substitute for the test. It is due within 5 days of finishing the chapter material.
- Paper needs to be 500 words, two references, and cover a topic from chapter
- No copy and paste papers or distillations of chapter material will be accepted
- If it does not meet minimum number of words (use Word word count found in status bar), have at least two references, and be about a topic from the chapter, it will not be accepted.
- See rubric for grading these papers under Content link
- CIT department Common Final
- 200 multiple choice covering all chapters and all projects
- Worth 100 points in course grade
- Will be done in a lab at school during test week.
- Can be taken during any of my scheduled CIT120 test times.
120-001: Mon 8 – 9:50 AM T343
120-002: Wed 8 – 9:50 AM T343
120-003: Wed 10 – 11:50 AM T343 - Projects – 9 projects
- Describe yourself and your computer
- Research IT topic and document search results
- Write a cover letter and resume for job 20 years in future
- Build a single page, two column newsletter covering an IT topic
- Create two worksheets covering two loans’ payment schedule
- Generate a worksheet using conditional formatting, aggregate functions, and charts
- Build two MS access tables and connect them via a relationship
- Use an existing Access DB to build a form, some queries, and a report
- Build a PowerPoint presentation document
- Each project has a project description document that contains a grading rubric, a project sample document, and a lab discussion document.
- The above three documents for each project need to be reviewed before the lab covering that project
- Lab time will be answering any questions on the project assignment and working on your projects so you should go over the three documents before coming to lab
- Journal Entries – two entries per chapter
- Each journal entry needs to be a meaningful paragraph with at least six sentences.
- One topic will be common for all students
- Second topic can be any topic from the chapter or related to the chapter
- Journal entries must be completed within three days of finishing the chapter in class
- See rubric for grading these journal entries under Content link
- Class projects for Section 1 and 3
- I will provide several class projects for each chapter that your group can choose from
- These class projects will be started in class but if you do not finish it, it must be submitted within three days of finishing the chapter in class
- Extra Credit – two types
- Post a new thread to one of the chapters’ forum with a link to a web site about a topic found in the chapter – up to 4 points for a post. You can get a maximum of 4 points per chapter.
- The second extra credit is for giving a presentation of your project 9 PowerPoint document.