General Course Information

The Text

The required text is Examples & Explanations for Administrative Law, Sixth Edition. It is available from Amazon and other sellers. All other materials will be provided on this blog or through Moodle.

Q&A Session

There is an optional weekly Q&A over Zoom on Wednesdays at 7:30PM CDT, starting Wednesday 31 May 2022. You can log into the Zoom meetings through the Zoom widget on the Moodle page. The session will be recorded and will be available for everyone to view. I welcome questions through email and will share the answers on the Class Q & A Page. My email is: richards@lsu.edu

The Workflow

Summer courses are demanding. We have to compress a semester’s work into 7 weeks. In a regular term 3 credit hour course, there would be 3 hours in the classroom and an expectation of at least 6 hours outside the classroom. For the summer, we do work equivalent to 6 class hours, plus 12 hours outside the classroom each week. Many of you are also working. Except for the short Academic Engagement Activity (AEA) quiz, which must be completed during the first week of class, this course is structured to allow you to complete weekly assignments over the weekend. (The campus uses the AEA to verify enrollment for financial aid and registration purposes.) Each week will have approximately the same amount of work, spread over 2 to 3 assignments.

The Quizzes

There will be quizzes over each week’s material, usually divided into parts to make it easier to complete. You receive full credit for completing the quiz on time, but you must get at least 80% of the questions correct for the quiz to count as complete. You can repeat the quiz as many times as you need until the quiz closes to get to 80%. The quizzes will be opened before the end of the week. The quizzes must be completed by the date indicated on the quiz on the Moodle page, usually Wednesday at 11 pm. This assures that those of you who are working or doing an externship during the day will have the weekend to catch up and complete assignments. Some weeks there will also be a forum for you to participate in. You will comment on an assigned topic and on at least one of your classmate’s comments. The forum comments will count as completed if you make a good-faith effort as defined in the forum. Forum comments will be assigned so that you have at least a weekend to work on them.

Grading and the Exam

This is a large class so it is subject to the mandatory grading curve for large upper-division classes. The quizzes and forum posts will be 40% of the final grade, with the exam counting for 60%. The total scores will be curved to determine the final 4.0 scale grades. Since I expect most people to get all of the completion points, it will be impossible to do well in the course unless you complete most of the work on time as we go through the course.

Classes end on Friday, July 14th. The exam is scheduled for Friday, July 21st. starting at 8:30. It is a take-at-home exam and will be 3 or 4 hours, which I will determine later in the course. You will use the exam software. The exam will be objective questions – no essays. You must do it at the assigned time unless you have made other arrangements with the registrar or disability services.

Assignments

The assignments will be posted on this blog starting on Tuesday, May 30th when the course goes live.