Your Teacher
Since this is not my first time for teaching the course I may be daring and experiment a little, using the POWER book differently from the way I have used it in the past. I am hoping you will have some new ideas for me, ideas that will help you become more resourceful and more successful as a college student.

In case you are curious about me, I have been with Seneca College since the mid 80's working with a number of programs. Since 1996, I have been with the School of Marketing and eBusiness where I also teach a number of courses. I also teach for the Centre for Professional Development. You can see more about my work in my Teaching Portfolio. I also teach at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. I have my own business, Karsten Productions and do work for educational publishing companies, for example, I'm looking after the site for your POWER textbook for McGraw Hill Ryerson publishers.

About this Course
I will be modifying this web site as we go along in the course, so I invite you to help me decide what works best on this site. Because the site is a work in progress, links on the main page to upcoming weeks will not be active yet. You have reading to do each week and with it a number of excellent activities. The best idea is to read the notes for the week before coming to class to be reminded of what we are doing. The notes for the week ahead are posted at the end of the previous week.  Please refer to the subject outline for details about the course. The activity schedule for this class may vary from other classes for SSC100 so be sure to watch the site for the latest schedule updates.

Time Management
If you visit my domain, astralsite.com you will see I lead a pretty busy life and I really need to slow down and to concentrate without the usual distractions of campus life so I work at home when possible. One of the things students seem to need to work on most these days is organizing their time so they can get everything done. Hopefully this course will be helpful to you in learning tips for dealing with time more effectively. If you click on the link to my schedule, you will see when and where I have classes so you can find me when I am on campus. You can always reach me by e-mail and if you need to, you can arrange to speak to me privately. I find e-mail a more reliable way to be in touch with students than phone. You can e-mail me by going to the MySeneca site and click on this course. There is a link from the Communications button where you can write to your instructor.

Create a Routine
I want you to have an excellent college experience. I hope you'll be able to find a routine for working that is at a way in which you can get to a quiet focus so that you can really concentrate on what you are reading and writing about. I find that it really helps to follow the instructions and do things like previewing the chapter first, finding parts you are most interested in and noting those pages before reading further.

Each week I will note the week's readings, class activities, assignments due and what is coming up in the following week. By printing off the weekly notes and any resources that give guidelines for assignments or projects, you have handouts you can keep in your notebook for handy reference when you are away from the computer.

I think it is important that you remember that you are doing this for YOU! I envy you having such a course. In the past students simply had to struggle along, learning the hard way how to be a successful student. Far too many fell by the way or had unnecessary difficulties in reaching their academic goals. You are fortunate to be given so many good ideas and tips for success in learning and these habits will help you throughout life as you continue your learning adventures.
It is a good indicator of how you will succeed in your college career when you look at how you are doing in this course.
Every semester a few students are disappointed when they fail this course. When they look back they see that their attendance was poor, they were late with assignments or did them carelessly or not at all. Perhaps this indicated that they were in the wrong program or that they were here because someone else wanted them to be. They may decide to drop out and work for a while until they feel a real motivation to succeed in college.

In Class
This first week in class, I will be getting to know you better. I will be giving an orientation to the course, an overview of what we will be doing together this semester and we will be going over the assignments and due dates.

Assignments

1. Reading Assignment: Chapters 1 and 2 in the POWER Textbook for next class.

2. MySeneca Site: Discussion Forum and Student Page (due in Week Four)
Each of you has been given an account that gives you access to your courses on the Web. If you go to http://learn.senecac.on.ca the first link on the left side is for your MySeneca site. I have put a Forum in the Discussion Area of this course on your MySeneca page.

1. Please post a short introduction so we know more about you.
2. Go to Student Tools, and Edit your Home Page.  Use the form for creating a simple home page (called Student Home Page). Here you can upload an image (a picture of yourself or an image from the Web that you like - just make sure it is not too big). You can fill in the text boxes with interesting facts about yourself and your favourite web sites.

In the next class, we will take a field trip to the AV department on campus where I will review the MySeneca site for your course.  When ready you can go to the computer lab in the Annex and try it for yourself.

Questions
Any time you have questions, I hope you will ask in class - someone else may be wanting to ask the same thing and they will be grateful to you for bringing it up. You can also e-mail me if there is something I can help you with. There is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)  page, and I will want to know from you if there are other useful questions to answer on this page. I will also ask you for your input on the Resource page and any other pages that you think will be helpful to students taking this course. You will find a link to useful searching sites linked from the course home page too.

If you want to find your course home page without using My Seneca, go to the following link,
http://people.senecac.on.ca/selia.karsten/SSC/100f2004.html and bookmark it (or save to favorites) in your web browser so you can easily return to the page anytime you like.

Coming Up

Next week you are expected to bring your textbook to class and to have read the first two chapters. In class we will be talking about activities related to these two chapters. We are also going to be going to the library to an AV room to look at this course on the Web.

September 6-10, 2004