Course Assignments
Professor John M. McCann
Fuqua School of Business
Duke University
Last update: March 19 1996
This page and its links describe course assignments for Marketing and the Internet. If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this page, please send them via email to mccann@mail.duke.edu.
Overview of Assignments
There are four assignments required to complete Marketing & the Internet, with the first assignment having two parts. The first two are to be competed by individual students. The final two are team projects. There are no examinations for Marketing & the Internet. Grading is based entirely on performance on the required assignments.
The Early, Individual Assignments
The first three assignments have very different objectives than the final two. As such, they are to be graded differently. These early, individual assignments are intended to make sure that everyone in the course has achieved the fundamental, mechanical skills required to develop applications for the WWW and understands how to search the WWW for information of interest. As such, these assignments are nearly pass/fail in nature. Each of the two parts of Assignment 1 and Assignment 2 are worth 20 points each, and it is expected that all students will complete them for the full credit. Failure to complete these first two assignments on time, or failure to comply with the specific criteria for each assignment will result in point reductions. Therefore, each student begins with the full points and can only lose points due to some shortcoming. In completing these assignments students are not "competing" with one another in any way. Instead, each student must simply meet the criteria for full credit.
The Team Assignments
The final two assignments are team-oriented. They are worth a maximum of 100 points each. For individual grading purposes, each student on a team will recieve the points granted to the team as a whole. There may be exceptions to this point allocation rule based on extraordinary circumstances; however, these exceptions are expected to be either non-existent or rare and are to be granted under the discression of the instructors. Unlike the early, individual assignments, the final two assignments are more open-ended. In completing these assignments, teams will be operating in a more competitive mode. Those who do a "better job" in meeting the criteria for the assignments will receive more points. Therefore, the maximum points a student can obtain is 260. Details of these two final projects will be discussed in class, once everyone has more experience in working with the WWW. The information provided below for the final two projects is, therefore, less complete than for the first two assignments.
Creating and Managing Your Team
Below are some rules for the formation of teams and our guidelines for grading team assignments:
- Students will form their own teams.
- Teams must submit a brief written statement, known as the Assignment 3 Target, on or before Monday, April 1. This statement must include a list of team members, the name of the team liaison, and the technology that the team will be investigating.
- By Monday, April 1, all students must be a member of a team.
- Teams must be composed of a minimum of four members and a maximum of five members.
- The number of students on a team is not taken into account for grading purposes.
- Students may use the section bulletin boards (not the main course bulletin boards) to advertise for team members. These boards are listed as open.ba.491.Mktg_Internet.S42 and .S43 for the two sections.
- All members of a team will receive equal credit and points for the Assignment 3 and 4 work products unless team members indicate that significant issues of unequal performance have emerged.
Criteria for Evaluating Team Assignments
Both Assignment 3 and 4 are to be presented as hypertext reports on the WWW. As such, you have an opportunity to demonstrate your mastery of two areas of learning: form and content. These will be regarded as essentially equal components in allocating points to your work products.
First, your work will be evaluated as a WWW site. From that perspective, instructors will be examining your work as a Web site, somewhat independent of the content that you are presenting. While there is a clear interaction between content and its presentation, it is not the quality of the marketing ideas and concepts that will be important here, but rather, the quality of your presentation. Here you can demonstrate mastery of the Web as a communications media, your understanding of "flow" in a WWW application, and your general ability to use the tools of HTML to create clear, interesting, attractive and effective presentations of your material.
Second, you will be evaluated on the quality of the ideas and examples you present. Here you will want to emphasize your analysis of implications of the technology you have identified. You will want to demonstrate how you have understood that technology and mapped its meaning, implications, and consequences into the digital dawn, the ways we live and work, and its impact on the media and marketing.
Some details on Assignments 3 and 4
Below are links to some specific details for completing your assignments. There are also instructions for making your work available for evaluation on the WWW.
Sample Completed Team Projects for Assignment #4
At this point, the course has been completed. Student teams have submitted their projects. Samples of student work for Assignment #4 can be viewed via this link.
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