Your grade for this course depends on class participation and your business plan. This is business, and business is about deliverables, so most of it depends on that one big project. You may find this different from some other courses, and I hope you like that difference. If you like to track your grade based on grades for individual assignments, you’ll be disappointed with the way I do it. Honestly, I don’t like grading or the grading process. It takes a lot of extra work for me and stress on your. But I do understand why you care about grades and I don’t blame you for it.  And I do try to do my best.

I can’t figure out weighting and percentages. There is no point system. I don’t grade the assignments, but I do read them and offer my feedback. You will get a grade on your business plan at the end, and you’ll get a grade for the course. Lots of different things will influence the grade.

Assignments

I’m giving you six assignments that you can turn in during the quarter so I can review them. But all of them are part of the final business plan, so I won’t grade the results of the assignments except at the end, as part of the business plan. So why bother to do them? Here are a couple of good reasons:

• Feedback: if you turn an assignment in on time I’ll look at it and give you some feedback — not a grade, but comments, possibly corrections, often praise, all indications of how this particular assignment will look as part of the business plan at the end.
• Risk: I’m human, so I’m influenced in an obvious way. I want my effort to review the assignments to help you. If you don’t turn them in, or if the final business plan ignored my feedback, then I’m going to unconsciously lower your grade. And since this is all in the unconscious, I’m not sure how much.

The Business Plan

You can click here to see the business plan assignment. I’m going to be influenced by how well you handle the logistics of it — submitting it on time, giving me a file format I can read, optimizing the readability, and so on — as well as the obvious factors like whether or not it actually covers the assignment, have you done everything required, have you done more than required, and so on.

I’m not going to grade you on any assignments, but rather on your final business plan. And although I’m going to encourage you to join together in groups to enter your plan in the business plan contest the school runs at the end of the quarter, I’m going to grade you individually, based on the business plan you submit. I may, however, add to or take away from your final grade based on class participation, your contribution to a group in the business plan class, your presentation at the end of the class, or how you do on one or more pop quizzes, if I decide to give any.

Presentations

You will make a presentation during the last three days of class. It will affect your grade. Those of you who have joined a group for the Venture Quest competition will be presenting as a group, and the rest of you will be presenting as individuals. A really good presentation can pull a borderline grade up.

Participation

Class participation matters too. I will not be taking attendance, but I will be noticing who has something to add in class, and I’d like you to participate in the web discussions on this site as well. And I definitely encourage participation in the Venture Quest competition that comes right at the end of this class. It’s fun, real money prizes are awarded, and it’s great experience. It involves doing a business plan and presenting the plan to a group of real-world people, volunteers from local business. Groups are encouraged, but you can do this alone too, if you prefer. You don’t have to, and you can get an A in this class without competing, but a good showing in the competition has raised some grades in the past.

There are some additional posts here related to grading.