(CRN: 34097)

Professors: Sally Demarest and Matthew Fleming

Email:  sarah_demarest@cuesta.edu

Email: mfleming@cuesta.edu

Distance Education Course: We have no face-to-face meetings, only virtual.

Spring 2025, Course Start and End Dates:  January 21st to May 23rd.

Please login to Canvas on Tuesday January 21st and begin working in the class.  If you have not logged in by Friday, January 24th by 10:00 a.m., you will be dropped from the course.

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Welcome potential students! My name is Matthew Fleming, and I look forward to working with you this semester. This course is going to be out-of-this-world.  Not only will we be taking a journey through the universe, but you'll have two fairly experienced captains helping you on the way. My good friend and colleague Professor Sally Demarest will be co-teaching the course with me. That means that you all are getting two professors for the price of one! :)

What you should know:

• This course is 18 weeks of intensive study
• We have no face-to-face meetings
• You must participate in this course on an almost every-other-day basis
• You must write a minimum of 300 words a week in online forums
• You will have homework assignments and readings due every Monday.
• You will write a series of essays including drafts and peer reviews
• You will be dropped if you fail to log in for more than 7 days and/or if your postings-to-forum or postings-to-homework percentage falls below 50%.

Required Text:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick

Dawn  by Octavia Butler

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Required Regular and Effective Contact:

This course requires regular and effective contact among all students and the instructor for the full 18 weeks of the course. We will achieve this in a variety of ways:

• throughout the week postings in discussion and homework forums in Canvas
• weekly book homework readings and submissions,
• interactive online essay work-shopping through Canvas forums
• viewing of short video lectures and content
• writing of a series of essays using turnitin.com

Course Learning Management System (LMS):

Canvas

We will be using the Learning Management System (Canvas), so please feel free to ask questions, look up youtube videos on how Canvas works, and contact our support desk when needing help: Send an email to support@my.cuesta.edu

• Include your name, class, section number (CRN), instructor's name.
• Describe the problem you are experiencing.

Course Description:

Introduces students to the literary genre known as science fiction, which can be defined as a speculative, science-based genre of literature, but which can also include elements of fantasy and horror. The course will examine the canonical traditions of the genre as well as the socio-political contexts from which popular science-fiction stories derive. Students will study the history of science fiction as well as prevailing trends in contemporary SF. Advisory: ENGL 201A. Transfer: CSU, UC.

Student Learning Outcomes:

1. Write a fair and persuasive argument that takes a clear position while incorporating differing viewpoints.

2. Write an essay that is effectively and clearly organized.

3. Find necessary information, assess its value, and use it in a research paper.
4. Integrate and document sources correctly, clearly, and ethically.

5. Write clear, grammatical sentences with few errors.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

For all the work in this course, please do not use Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to generate any of your content or ideas or to revise your sentences.  This policy includes all discussion forum assignments, homework assignments, essays, and projects.

A.I. tools such as ChatGPT, CopyAI, QuillBot, Gemini, Grammarly, and any embedded similar tools in such programs as Microsoft Word and Google Docs will corrupt your original content and Turnitin will reject it as plagiarized work. While we know that in many areas of life such tools can be valuable, in this class, we are eager to read your words about your ideas. Therefore, you should also disable settings in Google Docs or MS Word that offer suggested, predictive text about how to complete phrases or sentences. Using these predictive structures will likely lead your writing to sound (and be detected as) A.I. generated. It’s fine, however, to use basic spelling and grammar tools that highlight errors. Please let us know if you have any questions about what tools are acceptable.

Losing ownership of your original vocabulary, sentence structure, and thought content greatly reduces the possibility for improving your thinking and writing in this course and in receiving a passing grade.

The process of learning how to write effectively without artificial intelligence changes the way we think and puts us in control of our own perceptions and other people's perceptions of us.

The point of this course is to improve your abilities to write and think independently and continue to build your brain to work with language.  Having an A.I. program do that for you defeats the purpose of the course and makes us replaceable in future work situations.  If you ignore these warnings and submit A.I. content, you are officially cheating and will be deducted 10% off the grade on your assignment for the first infraction, 50% off the grade on the assignment for your second infraction, and you will fail the assignment on the third infraction.  This approach assumes that resubmitted work will be free of A.I. content.  This rule is cumulative across all course assignments, including homework, discussion forums, projects, and essays.  This type of plagiarism may lead to even more serious and long-standing issues that could impact your college career.

Every minute I spend policing such issues is time taken away from helping other students with their original work.  If you are struggling with an issue so much that you ignore the above information and consider resorting to A.I., reach out to me instead and I will help you.

PLEASE REVIEW THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND RESOURCES BELOW!!!

Canvas Browser requirements/minimum computer specifications:

https://www.cuesta.edu/academics/distance/faqs_technical.html

Academic Policies (add, drop, waitlist, academic honesty, etc.):

https://www.cuesta.edu/student/studentservices/admrreg/arpolicies/index.html

Distance Education Support:

https://www.cuesta.edu/academics/distance/technical_support.html

Disabled Student Services Program:

If you have a disability and might need accommodations (support services) in this class, please contact Disabled Student Program & Services in Building 3300 as soon as possible to ensure that you receive the accommodations in a timely manner.

https://www.cuesta.edu/student/studentservices/dsps/index.html Links to an external site.

Student Code of Conduct: http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/cuesta/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=A2SMMY5BC350 Links to an external site.