The packet of CDs is titled "Thinkwell's American Government with Rosenberg, Rom and Dickinson," Fall 2001 Edition, ISBN 1-931381-16-X. See also the required TEXTBOOKS list and the required READING LINKS site. Updated Feb. 2003.

Guest Lecturers and Other Thinkwell Features:

This is the only political science course offered by the University of Hawaii system that is using new digital technology (CDs) which brings the following guest lecturers into your home PC:

         a) Professor Mark Rom, Ph.D., U. of Wisconsin, Associate
         Professor of Government & Public Policy, Georgetown Uniiversity.

         b) Professor Gerald Rosenberg, Ph.D., Yale, Law
        Degree, U. of Michigan, Associate Professor of Political Science, U. of Chicago

         c) Professor Matthew Dickinson , Ph. D., Harvard, Assistant
         Professor Political Science, Middlebury College.

ATTENTION: If the Thinkwell CDs are sold out by the time you get to the UH Manoa or Hilo bookstores, order them directly from Thinkwell.   Click Here for details.   It takes only 3-5 days to get here via priority mail.

Features of the Thinkwell system, A SUMMARY:

1) MINI-LECTURES: There are close to 180 short 10 - 20 minute mini-lectures on the CDs of which about 120-130 are selected by the lecturer for this course. You are free to roam and view the ones that are not assigned if you wish. The lectures, in sound, color and sometimes with animations, can be viewed on your home PC off-line. (Very convenient -- you don't have to drive to the campus, park, walk into a classroom like you normally do.) For details on how to get the FULL unedited transcripts of all of the lectures off-line, CLICK HERE.

2) DISCUSSION ROOM: The Thinkwell system also has a Discussion Room ("Message Board"). This is where you can interact electronically with the lecturer and others in the class each month. Of course, Netiquette rules apply.

3) On-Line EXERCISES: You will be tested every week on each lecture, on-line. How? Easy. First you log into the Thinkwell site with your username and password. Then you click into the weekly schedule where the exercises you need to do are listed. Click on them and do them! These are basically "open book" quizzes -- about 6-10 questions for each assigned lecture module. They are NOT lengthy exams by a long shot! View all of the short lectures scheduled for the week before doing each exercise individually. Reason: On occasion, some of the questions for a particular lecture may be better understood if the entire set of assigned lectures for the week is viewed as a unit. After all, it's always good to see the forest from the trees. The score that counts toward your final grade is the FIRST TIME you do the quiz.

It is also important to re-do all quizzes for which your first-time score was less than 100 percent because the proctored final exam questions will be very similar to these weekly quiz questions, and re-doing the quizzes is a good way to fully understand the material at hand.

Note: The proctored final exam (90 minutes) is the only time that you will have to travel to a community college or university campus for this course. All other course requirements (weekly quizzes, tests, discussion room comments, papers, reports, etc.) are handled via the internet.

4) LECTURE NOTES: Of course, you should take notes of each lecture, but Thinkwell professors also provide you with their lecture notes on Disc #5 which is printable via free Acrobat software included on that CD. For details on how to quickly load the free Acrobat software and the lecture notes onto your PC off-line, CLICK HERE

Excerpt from the Thinkwell CD cover: "Your class instructor has selected a series of engaging ... multimedia tutorials on topics you will cover in your course. (Professors) Rosenberg, Rom, and Dickinson explain the fundamentals of American government in a clear, conversational manner. All the content of a traditional textbook is delivered in a way that is easy and fun to use."

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