Guidelines on Course Engagement grade and basic rules for all CUNY courses with NEL. (Updated: Fall 2026)
- ACCOMMODATIONS: Any student requiring accommodations should let me know and send me the documentation. It is important that every student does well in this class. You can expect complete discretion. For more information contact the Office of Special Services for Students with Disabilities.
- TROUBLES: If at any point during the semester you need help or feel lost or overwhelmed: Contact me! I am very responsive to e-mails, unless I am also having an emergency.
- COMMUNICATION BY E-MAIL: Contacting me is always an option. Announcements about the course will be sent by e-mail two or three times a week. All personal communication (outside office hours) will have to be by e-mail. You are responsible for providing a working e-mail to the instructor, for checking your e-mail daily, and for providing replies when requested.
COURSE ENGAGEMENT: GUIDELINES
- Attendance and Course Engagement represents 40% of your grade,. But what does it mean? Attending class is only the beginning. You are asked to be alert and engaged. Active participation includes being prepared for class, paying attention, asking for clarification if something isn’t making sense to you, speaking up with questions and comments, completing readings and assignments on time, taking part in office hours, and otherwise keeping lines of communication open. You begin with the full grade for this grading component, and will lose points only if you are unprepared for class or inattentive to the rules and guidelines.
- Attendance. You are adults and will manage your time as you see fit. You are expected to attend all class meetings and to be punctual. Attendance will be taken and lateness will be noted. You don’t need to explain one absence, as long as you contact me. More than that can turn into a problem.
- Punctuality. This is important, most of all in a big class. Class discussions aid understanding. Classes will usually include short writing exercises (ungraded) or, sometimes, surprise quizzes on the readings. See also item #5.
- Electronics Policy & E-notes: Phones must always be turned off and be kept out of sight during classes. If you take notes on a portable machine during classes, you are required to arrange this with me by e-mail beforehand.
- Surprise Quizzes. Some classes will start with surprise quizzes on the readings. These will be easy, unless you did not do the reading. No make-ups are offered for missed quizzes.
- Reading. Please complete the assigned readings and viewings before class, and post any assigned reading responses or journals by the specified deadlines. Live classes will review the readings, and may not make sense if the readings are not done in advance.
- Respect. Active listening, engagement with the material, respect for your fellow students, and patience with your colleagues and the instructor are all essential and will be noticed. That being said, debate on the subjects we are studying is encouraged. A sense of humor also helps. Let’s all make a relaxed, friendly, and exciting atmosphere, without undue pressure.
- Relevance: It is important and encouraged for you to speak up and ask or answer questions, especially if you need clarification on a point of discussion. However, remember your fellow students and our mission of learning about a specific history. Your comments in class should be relevant to the course material, the readings, and the discussion. In a big class, if you make a comment, which is encouraged and may be brilliant, hold off on your next one until other colleagues has had their turn to speak. Please allow enough space for your colleagues and the instructor.
- Academic Misconduct: Please read the CUNY Policy on Academic Integrity, which also includes definitions and rules concerning plagiarism. Plagiarism will be caught and punished, but you are trusted not to do it. My courses follow the principles of an honor code. We are all mature and sovereign individuals with common sense, dignity, and a conscience to guide us. You are asked to follow the rules for assignments, to avoid plagiarism and other forms of cheating in your written work, not to communicate with other students during exams and not to use materials that are not allowed for that test.
Note that avoiding plagiarism is largely just a matter of properly crediting and citing the sources from which you get facts and ideas. Copying a few lines from an author online and presenting it as if you wrote it would be plagiarism. But if you add a correct citation to the text you have copied, crediting the author and source, and if you then include your own analysis and thoughts about what the author says, it becomes good scholarship. - USE THE LIBRARY.
The following includes some old rules for avoiding bad online sites, and also some SPECIAL NEW RULES for dealing with “AI,” a.k.a. the Algorithmic Infernality.
You are asked never to use AI in this course. This is a Luddite course. (What are Luddites? If you don’t know, ask in class for an entertaining introduction.)
Please do not ask AI sites to write for you. Use of AI means automatic failure on the assignment, and probably the course. (There are ways to catch it; use of AI is often obvious.)
Please don’t ask AI to teach you about the subjects, or to do the reading for you. If you need some information that is not in the course readings or other materials, you can check with the instructor. If it really is not in the readings, I will be able to direct you to good sources.
Wikipedia (seriously) is sometimes dubious, but for now, for history as a subject, it is much more reliable than the machine or the junk sites (below). Wikipedia is often subject to the biases of its volunteer writers and editors, or to organized editing campaigns by states, companies, and political groups seeking to influence public opinion. This is true especially on recent or controversial subjects. Any encyclopedia should be treated as a work of reference and introduction, rather than as a source you cite in your own paper. (Wikipedia articles generally meet citation standards, allowing you to follow and check the sources.) The point here is that in practice, for now, Wikipedia is usually far, far superior to AI and many of the other links you receive at the top of a standard Google search, and often much more interesting and in depth.
What do I mean by “the other links you receive at the top of a standard Google search”? First, beware the Googlebot (also an AI) and other bot answers for anything other than simple data questions. To give an example: the text Google provides at the top of search results very likely is reliable for questions like “What was the population of China in 1750?” (It will give you the present scholarly consensus, although of course we could still be getting wrong.) If you then use the statistic in a course paper, you should confirm it by looking it up in an academically rigorous or official source.
Google (and AI) it will absolutely not be reliable for general and complex questions like, “What were the causes of the industrial revolution?” This question has been debated for about 200 years. There are various answers, some compatible to each other, some contradictory. Even if using the AI or Google’s automatic answer wasn’t cheating, you’d still be getting lousy, sometimes fictional answers.
Beware the top Google hits, especially on any “controversial” subject. These often offer some combination of
a) misleading propaganda from ideological think-tanks, often paid for by billionaires or organized political campaigns; or
b) commercial click-bait sites that make money from advertising (example: most of history.com, so that site is especially banned), or
c) commercial “tutoring sites” for K-12 that obey political restrictions passed by Florida and Texas lawmakers (sorry, no Khan Academy, etc.), or often
d) even more inferior junk not even written by humans but generated by algorithms — in other words, by forms of AI — to push scams (and often include pop-up ads for “adult sites”).
What should you use instead?
Online, look for academic resources and peer-reviewed research (for this, Google Scholar, at http://scholar.google.com, remains highly superior to the general Google search, and of course you have the library databases). Look for scholarship written by individual authors who have studied an academic discipline and published on history or other subjects related to the history we are studying. For complex matters, never rely on only one perspective. We will discuss what that means in class.
Most important conclusion:
USE THE COURSE READINGS. USE THE LIBRARY.
This is a university. We have a world-class library with access to databases and archives and top, super-competent, highly experienced, friendly human librarians of various specialties who can HELP YOU find quality scholarship and information. Make use of these awesome resources. - Remember the Class motto: DON’T PANIC!