Syllabus

International Relations of East Asia is an upper-level undergraduate course covering the foreign affairs of Northeast Asian nations. Topics explored in this course include the basics of international relations theories as they pertain to East Asia, the historical foreign affairs in the region and the foreign policies of the singular nations in the area, including security, economic, and non-traditional transnational issues. Upon completion of this course, students should be able to understand the historical legacies in East Asian international relations, analyze current East Asian foreign affairs through a theoretical lens, explain the impact of transnational issues on East Asian international relations, and evaluate the foreign policies of Northeast Asian nations. Students will be assessed by two reading & concept quests, four discussion arena essays and posts, a book review challenge, and a research paper quest.

Please review the FIU's Policies webpage. The policies webpage contains essential information regarding guidelines relevant to all courses at FIU, as well as additional information about acceptable netiquette for online courses.

1. All times and deadlines are given in United States Eastern Time (ET). Also, please note the Daylight Savings Time change on March 13, 2016.
2. No incompletes are given.
3. No make-up opportunities are given.
4. For discussion arena and book review challenge/final research paper: Late submissions will result in point penalties according to this rule: one day late = -10 %, two days late = -20 %, three days late = -30 %, etc.
5. For online reading & concept quests in Respondus LockDown Browser: reading & concept quests will be open for one week. Once the reading & concept quest closes at the deadline, it will not be re-opened for you and it will irrevocably count as a zero, if you did not take it before the deadline.
6. Copying from the textbook or cutting and pasting sections from websites or other reference materials or presenting someone else’s ideas as your own is plagiarism and will not be tolerated and will result in zero (0) points for that assignment. Please review the FIU Plagiarism Prevention Guide.  In addition, all work submitted must be original for this class.
7. This class will utilize the Turnitin originality software—integrated with Blackboard.
8. Papers that are not properly cited will be issued a zero. 
9. If the instructor is unable to open an attachment, it must be resubmitted within 48 hours or the assignment will be issued a zero.
10. Always check the uploaded attachment is correct.  After the deadline passes, the content submitted will be used for grading.
11. Medical emergencies can generally not count as excuses for not submitting assignments, taking tests or posting essays/replies. This is because the assessments (whether they be discussion arena posts, online reading & concept quests, or written assignments) are open for several days, sometimes weeks each and therefore you will have much leeway in deciding when to take an reading & concept quest, or submit an assignment. The only exception would be a truly grave medical emergency/accident in which you are hospitalized for several days or weeks. In such case, obtain written documentation and send a scan to instructor.
12. Textbooks and the purchase thereof are the student’s responsibility. Some article readings will be offered as download in Blackboard (“Course Readings” menu item) which are marked on this syllabus as “[PDF]” following the assigned reading below. Any readings from the assigned textbooks will not be made available for download.
13. There is no extra-credit in this class.
14. Appointments: I welcome students to contact me by email with questions or email me to make an appointment with me to meet on campus (MMC, for South Florida residents) or via Skype (for remote students).
15. The instructor reserves the right to modify this syllabus should the need arise.

This course utilizes the following tools:

• Blackboard Discussions (privacy policy)
• Blackboard Assessments (privacy policy)
• Microsoft Word (privacy policy)
• Turnitin (privacy policy)

Technical problems can sometimes come up unexpectedly. Students should have a backup plan for Internet and e-mail access in the event the home or work computer connection goes off line or crashes. Always keep a back-up copy of all assignments, discussion posts, and e-mails in a safe place. Though they are rare, major system outages and failures do happen. Individual technical problems are not an acceptable excuse for late assignments.

Throughout the semester, readings, announcements, notes of clarification, and grades will be placed in the FIU Online classroom. To access these, students will need to enter the classroom regularly (at least three times each week). Students should do a browser check-up to ensure all features in the FIU Online classroom work properly.

All technical problems should be directed to the FIU Support Services Help Desk by phone at 1-877-3-ELEARN or online. Be certain to request and note the “trouble ticket” number, which will be used to verify any claims of a system failure.

This class will use the Adobe Connect live classroom. Students must be able to access and use the Adobe Connect live classroom software. To get the most out of the live class experience, a headset (microphone and headphones all in one) is recommended, but not required.

• Lectures will be every Wednesday from 4:00pm-5:00pm

Reference Adobe Connect (Tutorials & Help) for additional information.

This course utilizes the following tools:

1. Discussion Arena (four posts in total: one response to the posted question, one follow-up question for discussion, and two responses to peers' posts for each quest)
2. Adobe Connect (lectures; live and recorded)
3. Turnitin integrated submission feature (submission of book review challenge and final paper—no password necessary to submit)
4. Online reading & concept quests with Respondus LockDown Browser (both fully online)
5. Program to compose written assignments (Microsoft Word, Open Office, etc.)
6. Adobe Acrobat Reader (Free at Adobe Website)
7. Internet Browser (preferred: Mozilla Firefox; Google Chrome and Safari have been known to not work consistently with Adobe Connect, so the latter browsers are not recommended)

Please visit our technical requirements page for additional information.

The Disability Resource Center collaborates with students, faculty, staff, and community members to create diverse learning environments that are usable, equitable, inclusive and sustainable. The DRC provides FIU students with disabilities the necessary support to successfully complete their education and participate in activities available to all students. If you have a diagnosed disability and plan to utilize academic accommodations, please contact the Center at 305-348-3532 or visit them at the Graham Center GC 190.

Please visit our ADA Compliance webpage for information about accessibility involving the tools used in this course.

Please visit Blackboard's Commitment Accessibility webpage for more information. 

For additional assistance please contact FIU's Disability Resource Center.

There are no prerequisites for this course.

This is an online course, meaning that most of the course work will be conducted online. Expectations for performance in an online course are the same as for a traditional course; in fact, online courses require a degree of self-motivation, self-discipline, and technology skills that can make them more demanding for some students.

Students are expected to:

• Review the how to get started information located in the course content
• Introduce yourself to the class during the first week by posting a self-introduction in the appropriate discussion forum
• Take the practice quiz to ensure that your computer is compatible with Blackboard
• Interact online with instructor(s) and peers
• Review and follow the course calendar
• Log in to the course several times per week
• Respond to discussion arenas by the corresponding deadline
• Respond to emails within three days
• Submit assignments by the corresponding deadline

The instructor will:

• Log in to the course several times per week
• Respond to discussion arenas within three days
• Respond to emails within 1 business day
• Grade assignments within four days of the assignment deadline

Communication in this course will take place via Email.

The Email feature is an external communication tool that allows users to send emails to users enrolled within the course including the instructor and other students. Emails are sent to the students' FIU email on record. The Email tool is located on the left side Course Menu (Blackboard user interface).

Visit our writing resources page for more information on professional writing and technical communication skills.

Keep in mind that your discussion arena postings will likely be seen by other members of the course. Care should be taken when determining what to post.

The first part of this assignment is posting your own response to each quest and corresponding reading on Blackboard’s “Discussion Arena.” Questions that you may respond to after reading are going to be provided in the heading of the discussion arena. The discussion arena that corresponds to each quest will be opened shortly after the quest becomes available. Your response should be between 300 and 350 words long, be structured like an essay, and ideally show reference to the studied quest and readings. At the end of your essay, please provide a question for further discussion that your classmates may reply to in the second part of this assignment. This first part of the assignment is graded with a rubric.

The second part of this assignment is reading and replying to the discussion posts of two of your peers. So after you have posted your own, original response in the first part of the assignment (reading others’ discussion posts is disabled until you post your own), you need to reply to, at least, two (2) discussion posts of your classmates: This will contribute to the discussion character of this task. This second part of the assignment is graded and included in the rubric.

This assignment corresponds to our quests in the course content and the assigned reading to it. So, for each quest, there will be a discussion feature. There will be as many discussions as there will be class quests. We may use Turnitin to check the originality of your posted essay. If you borrow material, identify the sources via proper citation. Your essay post must answer the question(s) provided to guide you in this assignment. Your posts will be graded in the order that they are submitted. Opinions and examples are valuable to your posts but you need to show that you have read the assigned reading and class quest.

Items to consider when writing your discussion:

• Relevance to assigned material: the posted ideas indicate that the student has read the assigned material.
• Clarity and coherence.
• Critical thinking: there is evidence that the student has adequately analyzed, synthesized, and evaluated the assigned material.
• Your discussion includes a question for further discussion on the topic. The posting articulates a question for discussion that pertains to the assigned material.
• Spelling, grammar: the posting must meet university-level standards of spelling and grammar.
• Length: the initial posting for each discussion post essay must be between 300 and 350 words.
• Guidelines: First submit your essay (ca. 300 words), then separately submit your discussion question, and then proceed to look at your peers posts and reply to at least two different peers’ questions/react to their essay.
• Please note: You will not be able to see what your peers have posted prior to submitting your initial post (essay). This is to ensure originality and no copy-paste/filibustering mentality. Should your first post be an empty post (to circumvent this initial blocking view of others’ posts), it will count as zero (0) points.
• Late submission is subject to the deduction policy specified above under “Policies.”

Rubric:

• Student clearly and coherently answers the question posted (1 point)
• Student posts a question for further discussion (1 point)
• Student includes theoretical concepts for discussion (2 points)
• Student includes explanations on the application of the concepts (4 points)
• Student uses University-level standards for spelling and grammar and professional demeanor (1 points)
• Student answers to peers’ discussion questions with two replies (1 point)

In order to mitigate any issues with your computer and online assessments, it is very important that you take the "Practice Quiz" from each computer you will be using to take your graded quizzes and exams. It is your responsibility to make sure your computer meets the minimum hardware requirements.

Assessments in this course are not compatible with mobile devices and should not be taken through a mobile phone or a tablet. If you need further assistance please contact FIU Online Support Services.

There will be TWO ONLINE READING & CONCEPT QUESTS (with Respondus Lockdown Browser).

Assessment Expectations:

• Complete the two online reading & concept quests within this course
• Relevant material for reading & concept quests are PowerPoints, Lectures, and—first and foremost—assigned required readings. Reading which are merely recommended are not directly relevant as reading & concept quest material—unless they have been mentioned, summarized or introduced via lectures or quests, for example (nevertheless, you do not have to read them but just know what was mentioned about them, if they came up in lectures/quests).
• The reading & concept quests are non-cumulative, meaning that they cover materials not previously tested.
• Reading & Concept Quests will consist of multiple-choice questions.
  • The first online reading & concept quest will become available for you to take it on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 12:00am ET and is scheduled with a deadline of Monday, February 1, 2016, i.e., it is due by 11:59pm ET.
  • The second online reading & concept quest will become available for you to take it on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 at 12:00am ET and is scheduled with a deadline of Monday, April 4, 2016, i.e., it is due by 11:59pm ET.
• The assessment duration is 60 minutes.
• Meaning that if you access the reading & concept quest last minute, e.g. on Monday, February 1, 2016 at 11:58pm ET, then your reading & concept quest submission would be marked as “late” and will be subject to point deductions. Therefore, it is recommended to take the reading & concept quest the latest one hour before the deadline.
• Result details:
  • Students will be able to see their results after the availability period has ended (i.e. all of the questions and answers).
• The expected turn-around time for grades on online reading & concept quests is immediately after the submission deadline.

• Review the Respondus LockDown Browser Instructions on how to install, access your assessments and view your grades.
• After installing the browser, please take the Practice Quiz to familiarize yourself with the testing environment and to ensure that you have downloaded the Respondus Lockdown Browser correctly.

A book review critically summarizes a newer book publication.

• Choose a book from the list below or any book you would like to review, as long as it is not older than five years, i.e., first published 2011 or after.
  • Recommended Book List
• The sections in a book review are usually an initial paragraph of five to six sentences of who wrote it, what is the title, what is his/her research focus/research question/approach in the volume, how does it fit within existing scholarship (how does it contribute, extend scholarship or how is it different from existing literature), what is the general chapter outline in the book. The next few sections should be about one paragraph per chapter, usually. The book review ends with a concluding chapter quickly summarizing again, giving your opinion about the validity of the research, the future impact of the book on the discipline. I recommend you search for existing book reviews of other books through https://library.fiu.edu and read through a couple of them before you write your own original one on your choice of a book. This way you will have internalized the sort of content outline that is expected from a book review.
• The book review cannot exceed 1,000 words. (Over a 1,000 words would be deductions from the guideline rubric; for some students the challenge is getting to 1,000 words, for others keeping it to 1,000 words—generally, it is a challenge to summarize and criticize a book of 200-300 pages within this word limit).
• The book review challenge is due through the Turnitin dropbox under “Assignments” in Blackboard. This means it will be checked whether it is original in terms of compared to the world-wide web, scholarly outlets, and reviews submitted with turnitin—but also compared to your peers in this class. This is an individual assignment and you must work on it by yourself, i.e., it cannot be identical or similar to another student’s submitted review.
  • The book review can be submitted starting on the first day of the semester up until Monday, February 29, 2016, 11:59pm ET via the Turnitin dropbox on Blackboard in “Assignments.”
• Late submission is subject to the deduction policy specified above under “Policies.”
• Grading timeframe is about one week after the submission deadline.
• Review the detailed Turnitin instructions on how to submit your assignments and how to review the Grademark comments (feedback) from your professor.

Rubric:

• Student summarizes the book under review critically (7 points)
• Student organized the research paper in a sound manner (1 point)
• Student followed the guidelines (1 point)
• Student presents review clearly with clear grammar and appropriate language (1 points)

Adobe Connect is an online meeting room where you can interact with your professor and fellow students by sharing screens or files, chat, broadcast live audio, and take part in other interactive online activities. We will be utilizing this tool to conduct lectures accompanying the modules.

Meetings will be available on the following dates—live and as recordings thereafter (if you cannot make it):

• Meeting 1: January 13, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (Quest 1)
• Meeting 2: January 20, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (1)
• Meeting 3: January 27, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (1)
   
• Meeting 4: February 3, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (Quest 2)
• Meeting 5: February 10, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (2)
• Meeting 6: February 17, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (2)
• Meeting 7: February 24, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (2)
• Meeting 8: March 2, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (2)
   
• Meeting 9: March 9, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (Quest 3)
• Meeting 10: March 23, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (3)
• Meeting 11: March 30, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (3)
• Meeting 12: April 8, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (3)
   
• Meeting 13: April 13, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (Quest 4)
• Meeting 14: April 20, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (4)
• Meeting 15: April 27, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm (4)

Requirements for using Adobe Connect:

• Disable any window pop-up blocker.
• Adobe Flash Player is required to successfully run your Adobe Connect meeting. You can test your computer to make sure your computer and network connections are properly configured to provide you with the best possible Adobe Connect meeting experience.
• Use of a combination headset and microphone with USB connection is recommended to ensure quality sound and reduce technical difficulties.
• I recommend using Mozilla Firefox browser. Internet Explorer or Safari browsers may be used, however, Google Chrome is known not to work with Adobe Connect, so please refrain from using the latter.
  
  Reference Adobe Connect (Tutorials & Help) for additional information.

Discussion Arena Posts:

• January 21, 2016 - First discussion arena, essay & discussion question due by 11:59pm ET.
• January 25, 2016 – First discussion arena, two participation replies due by 11:59pm ET.
• February 18, 2016 - Second discussion arena, essay & discussion question due by 11:59pm ET.
• February 22, 2016 – Second discussion arena, two participation replies due by 11:59pm ET.
• March 24, 2016 - Third discussion arena, essay & discussion question due by 11:59pm ET.
• March 28, 2016 – Third discussion arena, two participation replies due by 11:59pm ET. (Daylight Savings Time; make sure you have changed your clocks, or to note the changed time difference if you are taking this course remotely from a country without DST).
• April 21, 2016 - Fourth discussion arena, essay & discussion question due by 11:59pm ET.
• April 25, 2016 – Fourth discussion arena, two participation replies due by 11:59pm ET.

Reading & Concept Quests:

• February 1, 2016 – First online reading & concept quest due by 11:59pm ET.
• April 4, 2016 – Second online reading & concept quest due by 11:59pm ET.

Assignments:

• February 29, 2016 - Book Review Challenge due by 11:59pm ET.
• March 28, 2016 - Final Research Paper Topic Quest due by 11:59pm ET.
• April 18, 2016 - Research Proposal and Paper Outline Quest due by 11:59 ET.
• May 4, 2016 – Final Research Paper Quest due by 11:59pm ET.

Lectures:

• Meeting 1: January 13, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 2: January 20, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 3: January 27, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 4: February 3, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 5: February 10, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 6: February 17, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 7: February 24, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 8: March 2, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 9: March 9, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 10: March 23, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET (Daylight Savings Time; make sure you have changed your clocks, or to note the changed time difference if you are taking this course remotely from a country without DST).
• Meeting 11: March 30, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 12: April 8, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 13: April 13, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 14: April 20, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.
• Meeting 15: April 27, 2016 / 4:00pm-5:00pm ET.

University Deadlines:

• January 18, 2016 – Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday
• January 19, 2016 – Add/Drop period ends
• March 14-March 19, 2016 – Spring Break Holiday (University open, no classes)
• March 21, 2016 – Last Day to Drop Course with a DR grade
• April 22-April 30, 2016 – Passover (University open, classes in session)
• May 2-May 7, 2016 – Finals’ Week
• May 11, 2016 – Grades available on my.fiu.edu by 9:00am