Welcome to this course on Beauty, Form, and Function: an Exploration of Symmetry.
My name is Tim White and I'll be guiding
you through your studies over the next eight weeks.
Whether you are undertaking this course out of interest, or for credit.
I hope you will find it engaging and informative.
The organization of this course is somewhat different to what
you may be used to if you've done Coursera courses before.
The total length of the course is eight weeks.
And those eight weeks are divided up into four two week portions.
The lectures will be uploaded in two week segments.
So rather than being tested every week,
you'll find yourself being tested every two weeks.
The lectures will always be uploaded on
the Friday, preceding the two week study period.
Once they're uploaded, they'll remain
available and open for the entire course.
The course is highly structured, it begins with rather simple concepts in symmetry.
We then begin to look at plane and space symmetry in a more formal way.
In part three we begin to look at symmetry in crystals, as this
is one of the most beautiful and elegant ways to examine and understand symmetry.
And finally, we consider symmetry
in technology and in science.
First, let's talk about the graded assessment.
There is no final exam in this course.
Rather, at the end of each two week segment there will be assessable material.
For every part, there will be multiple choice question sets.
In addition, there will be a field exercise, a writing
exercise and a learning log which you will need to complete.
You'll see that the assessment is growing throughout the course.
So it's not possible to do a lot of work right at the end and catch up.
It really is necessary to work continuously throughout the entire course.
The assessable homework has hard deadlines which are
always at 18:00 hours Singapore time on a Monday.
The dates are shown on this slide.
It's very
important that you meet these deadlines as there will be no extensions given.
You will be given ample opportunity to
gain practice before you attempt the graded assignments.
Each part of the course has a multiple choice question
set which will closely model the questions which are assessable.
The first field exercise is for practice only.
It will allow you to make sure that you can upload your homework
successfully and also mark other students homework against a rubric.
The writing exercises will be dealt with in the same way.
The first exercise is simply for practice
whereas the second exercise will be graded.
There are also hard deadlines for the practice
exercises and also the peer to peer marking.
Many of you will want to obtain a statement of accomplishment.
This is what you have to do.
It will be compulsory that you attempt
all four graded multiple choice questions sets.
Set one, two, three, and four.
You are allowed three attempts, and we will
take your highest mark for your final assessment.
You will also need to complete field exercise
two, which is concerned with applying symmetry around you.
There is also writing exercise two, where you will
critique a paper, published in the open access Journal Symmetry.
And finally, a learning log template is provided,
which allows self reflection on your learning progress.
To obtain a statement of accomplishment with
distinction, a mark of 85% is required.
These pass marks are relatively high. This is because
this course is also an unrestricted elective course at NTU.
It carries a weight of three academic units.
However, to obtain those three academic units, you
will have to be registered in the signature track.
You will need to obtain a verified certificate.
But if you obtain the certificate and you wish to
enroll at NTU at a later time, you can present
the certificate and be immediately granted the credit of the three academic units.
If you're in the signature track and you wish to obtain your verified certificate
it will be essential that you always
confirm your identity when you submit you assignments.
Also remember that for students who may have financial difficulties, Coursera
may provide financial aid so you can register in the signature track.
To encourage interaction, we are having two synchronous tutorial sessions.
The first tutorial session will be dealing with the field exercises.
The purpose of this tutorial session is to make sure that
you have no technical problems, in terms of uploading and marking homework.
And also to make sure that you understand what is required in a formal sense.
At these tutorial sessions you will be able to post questions
either through the Coursera discussion forums, or you'll
be able to send your questions in through Twitter.
We will do our best to answer as many questions as possible.
There will be a second synchronous
tutorial session looking at the writing exercise.
They will be conducted after you have
submitted the first practice writing exercise and
again, it will look to overcome any difficulties that you may have in carrying
out the homework or marking the homework.
For those students resident in Singapore, there will be a face
to face meeting opportunity provided in the middle of the course.
We hope as many of you as possible attend this.
To help you navigate this course, there are a suite of materials that we think you
should download and print out so that you can keep track of all of the deadlines.
First there is a comprehensive
time table for graded and non-graded assignments.
This time table shows you all of the hard dead lines
both for submission of homework, and
completing peer to peer marking assignments.
It also gives you the dates and times for
this synchronous tutorial, and the face to face meetings.
Secondly there is a complete list of the lecture and tutorial schedule.
As already
mentioned the lectures will be released in two week parts.
You are encouraged to work through the lectures sequentially,
as subsequent lectures always build on the earlier material.
There is also a personal learning log template, you should
start filling this in from the second week of the course.
The template is designed to allow you to reflect
on what you have learned and monitor your progress.
There are also two downloads concerned with field exercise 1.
The first is a template, which you should
complete when doing your homework, it also shows
the marking rubric.
There is also a completed field exercise 1 with
model answers, so you understand what will be required.
For every lecture, notes are provided in PowerPoint or PDF format.
There are also subtitles available, if English is not your first language.
Those of you who do not have the bandwidth to stream the videos continuously
will need to download the subtitles separately,
and also the in video questions and answers.
There are two hard deadlines for Part I.
The first is a submission of your homework for field exercise 1.
Remember that to get further guidance on
how to conduct this field exercise, you can
look at the tutorial at the end of Part I.
There is also your first assessable multiple choice question set.
This will count for 20% of your total assessment mark so it's very important.
The course notes are self contained but I know
that many of you would like to do additional reading.
Listed here are some of the books that we recommend for your general reading.
Some are only available from a library, others are downloadable for free.
You will find a comprehensive list of books
available for each part of the course that's downloadable.
I'd also like to provide you with some hints and
tips on how to make best use of the course material.
My suggestion is that you attempt the practice
multiple choice question sets for each part straight away.
You might not do very well, but it will show you what the
important concepts are that we expect you to learn in each two week segment.
Some of the lectures are content rich and if you are undertaking this course for
credit, you will probably have to view
them more than once and take additional notes.
Also keep up to date with your learning log.
It's a way for you to see what you have
learned and gain some satisfaction in how much you have accomplished.
I know that many of you are seasoned Courserans,
so this information may not be new to you.
But if you are just beginning you would like to
know what files are downloadable directly from the lecture page.
You have a choice of PDF and PowerPoint lecture notes.
You also have copies of the in video quizzes.
In particular, the answers as well as the questions.
You can also obtain subtitles.
And I mentioned that you have to open the subtitle file in
WordPad or something equivalent so you maintain the format of the file.
If you're also working in English as a second language and
would like the subtitles, then you also should download the SRT file.
For the video and the SRT file to communicate, you will
have to put them in the same directory of your PC.
Naturally, these Coursera offerings do not run by themselves.
And I'd like to introduce you to three
gentlemen who will help you with your studies.
First there is Roy NG.
He will be solving any communication
problems you have, particularly with social media.
Then, there will be Suhaimi.
If you have technical difficulties in uploading or marking the
homework, or any other technical problems, he's the gentleman to contact.
And in terms of the content of the course, you should contact Hou
Ran, who is one of my former students and understands symmetry very well.
As this is the first time we are running
this course, we really would appreciate your help to
identify any problems in terms of the material we
present and also, if there are any technical difficulties.
We have things to learn as well.
I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to the rest of the cohort.
We have students from 101 countries, so
this course provides a wonderful opportunity to
interact with colleagues from around the world,
who have a similar interest in symmetry.
One of the utilities we provide is ZeeMaps, you can use ZeeMaps to upload
some contact information, as much or as little as you feel comfortable with.
We encourage you to use ZeeMaps
to establish study groups.
These might be on the basis of your city, your region, or perhaps language.
Ideally you'll find someone in a town or city close to you that you can meet
face to face to discuss the content of
the course, and perhaps solve mutual problems of understanding.
You can see that most of the students come from North America and Europe.
But the absolute numbers in other regions is also very high.
So your chances of finding a friend that you can work with should also be high.
To create study groups you can either use the Coursera discussion forum,
or you can use a Facebook page, which we've established for this purpose.
As you would expect with students coming from
so many countries, the language backgrounds is quite diverse.
If we have a look at the statistics for this group, we can see that a
roundabout half of you would write English as
your first language, but the other half do not.
And your competency in terms of reading,
writing and speaking varies quite a lot.
So,
what I would do is encourage you to
be very generous when you are doing peer-to-peer marking.
The backgrounds of the students are very diverse.
Your language capability is diverse.
And what we're really about is trying to enthuse you in learning about symmetry.
We don't want to be tough on each other.
So please be kind in the way that you manage the discussion forums,
and also the way in which you carry out peer to peer marking.
This should lead to a more conducive atmosphere for learning.
Finally, we really need your help to make this course as good as it can be.
To help us do this, there will be a short survey
opening at the end of the first week of the course.
We really would appreciate it if you spent
about five minutes to fill this survey form in.
So to conclude, welcome to this course again.
I look forward to your participation and I hope your studies go very well.