To earn an A in this class, you must argue for why your work is worth an A. Meeting the basic requirements for an assignment is not enough.

Up to four times a semester, you can submit memos arguing for why your work on a particular project is deserving of an A, and if your argument is well supported, I will mark the assignment as Credit+A in Blackboard. Every A-level credit you earn adds 1/3 a letter to your final grade. Therefore, students can also use A-level credit to move from a C to a B or even failing to passing in some cases.

Because this is an upper-level class, I do not define the exact specifications that would make an assignment worthy of an A. You get to come up with ways to enhance your assignments to what you feel would be A-level. Students are often able to imagine a wider variety of enhancements than I can, and coming up with enhancements to the assignments on your own requires a deeper understanding of what you are doing.

NOTE: I do not permit students to earn more than 4 A-level credits in a semester. If you do all the work for this class with no No Credits, you only need two assignments to reach A-level.

How to Earn Credit+A on an Assignment

1. Meet all the basic requirements of the assignment.
2. Do work that merits an A, which could include doing higher quality work (more advanced designs, more detailed content, a really polished finished product) or more work (making more pages, doing more research, making additional prototypes, adding complex features).
3. Submit (in the same place as the assignment at at the same time or within 1 week of the deadline) an A-level memo explaining what you did and why it merits an A, using this template:

A-Level-Memo-Template.docx

Earning an A

All Credit+A grades add 1/3 a letter to your final grade, which means 1 Credit+A can bring a B to a B+. Another Credit+A assignment would bring that B+ to an A-.

You only need 2 Credit+A assignments to earn an A as long as you do not have any No Credits and have not exceeded three unexcused absences. I mark A- as A at the end of the semester, and anything above A- is marked as A+. I do not round up any other grades.

Earning Other Grades

Another example would be if you had earned 2 No Credits. Each No Credit reduces your grade by 1/3 a letter, so 1 No Credit would take your grade from a B to a B-. The second No Credit would drag it down to a C+.

You could earn 1 Credit+A to add 1/3 a letter to your grade, bringing it from a C+ to a B-.

Details About Earning A-Level Credit

To earn a Credit+A, you must go beyond the basic requirements on an assignment and write a memo arguing for A-level credit. To be specific:

• The only assignments you can earn A-level credit on are: the informal competitive analysis, the user profile package, the low-fidelity prototype, the SEO revised page content, the team website, or the team presentation. If you wish to wish to earn bonus credit by doing a different project, you have to speak with me to have your idea approved first.
• Complete the assignment on time, adhering to all basic assignment requirements as listed on the course website.
• Do A-level work. If you are not sure how to go beyond the basic requirements, see the "Thinking of Ideas" section below or talk to me.