Class participation can help your grade on this course, and lack of participation can hurt your grade. You won’t get a number or even a letter grade for participation, but it will influence me at the end. A person with a B business plan could end up with an A in the course if he or she were participating well. And a person with an A business plan who never came to class is going to get about a C on the course, because I’ve got tons of supplemental material on the business plan itself, but by not being in class you will have missed a lot of discussion.

Participation also includes participation in the online discussions on this site. It’s perhaps a bit overambitious to pretend that commenting on a blog, which is what’s going on with these discussions, is the latest leading edge in social media. Still, it’s a start.

Here are some important notes:

• I’m not going to take attendance, but I’m going to be disappointed if you skip a lot of classes. And I’m also disappointed if you come to class and don’t participate in discussion.
• I can’t guarantee that I won’t be offended if you’re in class doing IM, Twitter, work for some other assignment, Facebook, or anything else. You’re welcome to bring a laptop and take notes on it, but I’m a laptop addict myself and I’m quite guilty of not paying attention during a business meeting because I’m doing email. As a personal note, I really like twitter — follow me as Timberry — but I know it can be distracting. Because I suffer from the same online bad habit I’m noting here, I’m more likely to know it if you’re doing it, and that will then be more likely to affect your grade.
• A good comment, a good question, an example at the right spot in the discussion, all of those can help your participation.
• Participating in the end-of-the-course business plan can make a big difference in your grade. It’s not inconceiveable that you could have a C+ or B- in your business plan and then take an active part in the winning team, and end up with an A. On the other hand, I like to think that I can tell from the presentation for the contest when one or more of the group members weren’t actively involved.
• Please don’t email me your reason for not attending class. You’re an adult now. I assume when you’re not there that you had a good reason. I don’t take attendance and there is no such thing as an excused absence.

While this isn’t a class in writing, and not even in business writing, it is about starting a business and that, like it or not, includes being able to communicate well. So your grade will be affected by the quality of your writing. Here are some tips.

Simple is better. Simple writing makes the same impression as a clear and uncluttered room when you enter it.

Bullet points are fine. When a thought is so completely obvious that nobody could ever want more explanation, then you can get away without more explanation. Most bullet points, however, need dressing. Don’t just tick off an entire topic and think you’ve covered it.

I’ve become particularly sensitive to the following common errors. Think of the feeling you get with fingernails on a chalk board. That’s what’s happened to me.

• Then and than. Then is sequential, than is comparison. If we have more of this than that, only then can we move forward.
• It and its. It’s annoying when an apostrophe shows up where it’s none of its business.
• Apostrophes.
  • Showing possession: Susan’s book, Bill’s book
  • Showing contraction: don’t, please, didn’t, won’t.
  • Apostrophes don’t have anything to do with plural except for their natural look when it’s the boys’ book, for example. Or the cars’ problems. You have a plural word ending in s, like so many plurals do, and then you add an apostrophe to show possession.
• Common misspellings. Buisiness makes me unhappy.
• Their, there, they’re. Their problem, they’re going to fix it, but not until after they get there.
• There is, there are. Unless there is just one item, then there are more than one items. Unless there is a set of problems, or a number of problems.

It’s not hard to avoid most of the very common mistakes, which are, not entirely by coincidence, the ones that affect me the most. If you’re not sure, I suggest this quick google search for common writing mistakes.

I may decide to do a pop quiz, or two or three, during the course of this class. I do that because I want you to come to class as much as possible, I want you to do the readings I assign, and I want you to go through the videos I assign you for the two classes that will be individual videos.

Quizzes won’t be hard. I might for example put three slides on the projector and ask you to identify the one of the three that was included in the online videos. I might ask you to write a paragraph related to a reading or one of the videos.

Quizzes don’t directly affect your grade unless they make it obvious that you haven’t done the reading or watched the videos I assigned. And if you miss a quiz, you can’t make it up; but don’t worry, if you jut had bad luck, you were sick that day or had an important job interview, missing a quiz won’t hurt your grade when everything else is fine.