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In an adult teaching/learning environment, there are behavioral expectations and performance standards. The members of the Southwest faculty are eager to foster an atmosphere of scholarly inquiry and sharing, trust, acceptance, mutual respect, and safety. The faculty believes that providing quality instruction under these conditions is foremost among Southwest’s mission and that the classroom is the primary focus for that instruction. The faculty also believes that the classroom environment can positively or negatively affect the learning process. The following code is an effort to ensure that every student has a positive learning experience.
Class Time
Every class at Southwest has a designated beginning time and ending time. While there are always legitimate institutional reasons for the class to end early (snow, for example), the College will make that decision. There are also legitimate personal reasons for a student to leave class early (a doctor’s appointment, for instance). Prior to the beginning of class, a student should inform the instructor if he or she needs to leave early and then should do so in a discreet manner.
Missing Class
Students missing designated class times have a number of responsibilities. They should check with the instructor and find out what they have missed during the absence. Generally, students are responsible for participating in a class’s activities on the first day back from any period of absence.
Class Interruptions
Southwest requires a number of administrative responsibilities of both instructors and students, such as signing drop forms, attendance sheets, and so on. Students should ask instructors to attend to these tasks during their office hours, not during class.
The instructor is the designated spokesperson in each classroom. He or she may design in-class activities that require student response or even student conversation, but continual unsolicited talking in the classroom disrupts classroom quality and deprives all students of their right to a quality educational environment.
Some activities, such as bringing children to class, using a computer or other electronics device instead of listening to the instructor, eating, sleeping, doing homework for other classes, or refusal to carry out assignments or requests, generally disrupt classroom continuity. The instructor may ask students to stop such activities should they occur during class. For repetitive disruptions, the teacher may elect to take further action to stop the behavior, such as ask the student to leave the classroom or in extreme cases drop the course altogether.
Peer Respect
Students share a classroom with many peers. These peers deserve not only a quality learning environment but an environment free from fear and intimidation.
Open Labs and the Library
Open Labs and the Library offer unstructured learning opportunities for students. These facilities offer both academic and social experiences, but the academic experience is primary. In order to maximize this experience, students should avoid creating a noisy environment. In an open lab, students engaged in recreational computer use should be willing to surrender their spaces to students completing required classwork. Students sending email should employ the same courtesy required by face-to-face communications, including abstaining from using offensive language or making personal attacks.
Electronic Devices
Any electronic devices, with headphones or not, are not allowed in class unless specified by the instructor.
Plagiarism
A student must complete his or her own work. Tutors are available to assist when help is needed, but no one should do an assignment for someone else. To use someone else’s words or ideas without proper credit is called plagiarism and could bring disciplinary action up to and including dismissal from college.
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