How this course expects sources, factual claims and submitted work to be handled, and where to get help.

Policies and support

These are the rules specific to how this course works, not a general university policy page — for anything else (extensions on medical or personal grounds, misconduct processes, disability support), use the university’s own channels; a course page isn’t where those live.

Source use

A factual claim about Taiji, Bagua or the Yijing must trace back to a source of the same kind the course itself uses: a primary text, an academic monograph or article, or a museum/archival record — not a tertiary wiki (Wikipedia, Baidu Baike, and similar) cited as though it settles the question. Those sites are a fine way to find a source; they are never the citation itself. This is the same discipline the course’s own weekly sessions follow when they name a source inline for a contested or specific claim.

Factual claims

When your own work makes a factual claim about this course’s subject matter, say which of the three registers introduced in week 1 it belongs to: historically attested fact, traditional or legendary attribution, or later interpretation and modern analogy. Don’t present a contested scholarly position as settled consensus — if you’re relying on one scholar’s specific argument (a dating, an attribution), name them. An unmarked claim is treated as an assertion, not a documented one, and is marked accordingly.

Assessment work

Assignment 1 and the final project are marked on whether you built the notation and reasoned through it — see Assessment for the weighted criteria. A hexagram traced from a reference diagram, or a transformation stated without the derivation that produced it, doesn’t meet either brief regardless of whether the final answer happens to be correct. Show the construction step and the transformation step as work, not just the result.

Responsible handling of tradition and interpretation

This course discusses legendary attributions (Fuxi, King Wen, Confucius) and later reinterpretations (feng shui, Jungian readings, “the I Ching predicted binary computing”) critically, not dismissively. In your own submitted work:

Getting help

Ask in session first — most questions about construction, the changing-line rule, or sourcing a claim are quicker to answer with the builder or the text in front of both of you. See People for who to ask and how, and each assessment brief for anything specific to that piece of work.