Final grades

OK, the final grades are out. A few changes have been made after the beta (where you find information about the assessment procedure). Most notably Borys deserves to be included among the masters (who now are six). Of the 35 blogs 32 was accepted (or better). Magda may still be accepted because we have earlier agreed on an extended time for that blog (for reasons the blogger in question brought up early on).

I have probably spent ten times the amount of time I anticipated (and is paid for) for this course. On the other hand I have learned a lot and believe that we togheter created a great case, in some sense seminal. I wish to thank all of you that took this task seriously (which can bee seen in your grades). Good luck with your future studies, work and life in general!

In case you want to add some forther remarks here concerning how you look at the assignment per se, I suggest you do that as comment on the earlier post (Less than three weeks left) which already contain such reflections. And/or of course in your own blogs.

Eponym are gracious

Three of our blogs (Blogproof aka To blog or not to blog, Virtual life and SAM staying alive management) are hosted by Eponym.com. A while ago Eponym decided to end their free hosting and only offer paid services. The students behind the first two of the affected blogs asked Eponym if their blogs could remain for a while, as our experiment is academic, experimental and interesting.

Yesterday Greg Billingsley from Eponym replied with:

After reviewing your request, we will gladly make an exception for the two blogs, "virtuallife.eponym.com" and "blogproof.eponym.com."

I would personally like to thank Greg, and Eponym, for their kind offer.

Grades (in beta)

Here is a beta release of how I have graded your assignments. Please let us know if you think my grading of you, and/or your peer students, is unfair. If so, motivate your standpoint and include links that support it.

In total I found 32 blogs. As you understand it has been a complicated task for me to look through all the blogs, postings, and comments. I have not really scrutinized your writings, just sort of skimmed your posts. I have used your display names to identify who said what within our aedbe blogosphere.

Five Masters
Forty4, e-grasshopper, blogproof. Boguslaw and maniana, have really impressed me – in particular Forty4. They have all been active bloggers, focused their posts on DBE-matters, as well as helped and interacted with fellow students. I learned a lot by reading their blogs and comments. Thank you!

Too many cared little
About half of the blogs reflect more than minimal work just to pass the course. The rest seems to believe that you do not have to do anything to pass, even though I extended the deadline. To my surprise many of you relied on just stealing others stuff and posting it as text in your blog. The assignment is very public! Anyone who reads it can easily get the impression that Polish MBA students do not care about their learning or the value of others work.

Too little time
Many of you pointed out how time consuming the assignment has been. I am not sure if you really have compared your efforts with time normally spent for a traditional assignment (meetings, researching, analyzing, writing, etc). I thought that you actually spent more time with the assignment in the marketing communications course. In any case, those of you who have worked with the assignment should be well credited for that.

The numbers
I have graded your efforts between 1 and 5, where 3 is accept and 5 means passed with great excellence. To be considered for an acceptable level you had to start a blog and create more than two posts. If the posts only contained materials copied from other Web sources (without crediting the sources) I tended not to regard that as acceptable. In addition the three parameters below were used for grades above 3.

• blus (blog use) measures how you have used your blog. To get above 3 you have to have more than three posts and/or utilized some of your blog host’s additional functions. More postings, more functions, etc. render higher levels.
• buto (business tool) because you had to select a business problem and identify a DBE tool that addresses it. The buto parameter measures if you have done so, and to which extent your blog actually relates to the problem/tool. In other words, buto sorts of evaluates the assignment beyond the technicalities concerning blogging as the report form.
• iapa (interactive participation) because work is very much about interaction. The iapa parameter is a rough estimate of how interactive you have been. I have given you points if I found that you: Linked to peer students; Commented in other blogs; Replied to comments on your blog; Interacted with me; Helped others with technical issues.