Grading and Expectations
Although your final grade for 12.000 will be a "Pass" or will not appear on your record at all ("No Record"), you should know that your instructors for this subject (hereafter "KH+RB") do not simply judge your performance as passing or failing. On the grade sheet that you receive at the end of the semester, you'll see the actual grade that they have given you, even though it does not actually appear in your permanent record. However, this grade is an important message from them to you: it reflects how closely you met their (and your!) expectations for performance.
During the first week of class, the students in each section will be divided into ten teams and each team will be assigned two undergraduate teaching fellows (TFs) and one or more Alumni Mentors. An important aspect of Mission 2006 is its emphasis on teamwork. As a consequence, 70% of your grade depends on the performance of your team and only 30% on your individual performance.
Deliverables
The design challenge presented to students of Mission 2006 on the Home page will be fulfilled when two assignements are completed.
First, the class must create a content-rich web site to describe and justify their overall design. More details regarding this Project Web Site may be found on the Web Design page.
Second, the class will make a final, one-hour, oral presentation of its design on December 6, 2002. This presentation will be open to the entire MIT community and will be broadcast over the World-Wide Web. In addition, a panel of international experts have been invited to attend the presentation and to critique it in an open forum. The presentation should be illustrated using Power Point graphics and should be considered formal. Because it would be logistically impossible for everyone in 12.000 to speak during the presentation, the staff recommends that each team elect one of its members to join a "presentation committee" that will choreograph and make the final presentation. Again, this committee member should not bear sole responsibility for the work involved in developing the presentation; pull your weight!
The Individual Grade Component
Thirty percent of your grade reflects how well you, as an individual, met the expectations of KH+RB over the course of the semester. They expect that you will...
Attend all scheduled class and team meetings
Arrive promptly for these meetings
Do all reading for the "Perspectives" discussions. You will not be tested on the content of these readings, but you should develop sufficient familiarity with the content that you can discuss them intelligently.
Participate in the "Perspectives" discussions
Create and maintain your Personal Web Site (see the Web Design page for more information)
Contribute to Team Web Site and Project Web Site development and the final presentation
Pull your weight during team activities
Treat others and their ideas with respect
Based on their assessment of how well you meet these expectations, KH+RB will assign your individual grade component at the end of the semester. At any time during the semester, you should feel free to contact them to learn their preliminary assessment of your performance.
The Team Grade Component
Although KH+RB expect that all teams will coordinate their efforts to complete the "deliverables" described above, each team will establish its own performance expectations at the beginning of the semester and the final team grade will reflect how well those expectations were met. Here's how it works.... At the first team meeting of the semester on September 11, your team members should talk among themselves and decide what you must accomplish by the end of the semester in order to deserve a team grade of "A". Articulated in a single paragraph and submitted to your TFs, this set of expectations constitutes a contract between your team and KH+RB. At the end of the semester, your team will be asked to review this paragraph, determine how well you met those expectations, and propose a grade for your team. If you fulfilled all of your expectations, you deserve an "A". If you fulfilled most of them, you deserve a "B". If you were only about half successful, you deserve a "C". Anything less and you don't deserve to pass. You will submit the grade your team believes it deserves to KH+RB. At the same time, the TFs assigned to your team will make an independent assessment of your team's performance. Based on these two assessments, KH+RB, Kate, and Jeremy will assign the final team grades.
The Final Grade
Your final grade will be computed as the 70%-30% weighted mean of your team grade component (i.e., your team's final grade) and your individual grade component.