Instructor Resources

COURSE DESIGN

There are two main ways to use this text. One way is for the occasional student who wants to do an independent study project and needs the kind of guidance that this text provides. The other way to use this text is for many students who are enrolled in a regular course that focuses the entire term on a large writing project.

Independent Study

If you have a student who is doing an independent study project, I recommend that you designate two assignments--the "Paper" and the "Presentation"--to comprise the student's entire course grade. Students who complete independent study projects tend to be more motivated to receive an excellent grade and typically require less motivation to keep up with assignments. This arrangement provides motivation for students to do their best on both assignments.

I typically weight each of these two assignments equally at 50 percent of the final course grade. In my experience, the quality of the two assignments are very similar because the assignments themselves are so closely related.

I typically make both of the assignments do on the same day because student often discover errors in their written analysis only after they hear themselves talking about it in their recorded presentations.

Even with highly motivated students, I recommend that instructors decide which kind of analysis is most appropriate for each student and then require students to discuss with you early in the academic term what are the student's plans are in terms of a topic. It is common for students to be apprehensive about a large writing project and unclear how to start. Some analyses in this text are more prescriptive than others. The most prescriptive analysis is the global commodity market analysis. Students who do that analysis literally just need to choose a global commodity from list in the text. The other analyses are slightly less prescriptive, and the point where students need the most guidance is at the very start.

A Regular Course

The kinds of analysis covered by this text are most suited for junior- or senior-level courses, but first and second year students have done well. All students should have completed at least two semesters of basic college writing.

I recommend that instructors selected on kind of analysis for all students in the course rather than letting student choose from the text which kind they want to do. One reasons is that students can learn a lot from their fellow students because every analysis covered in this text is so highly prescribed. Though students will choose or be assigned to work on different topics, the analysis that each student conducts is so similar in terms of the prescribed outline that student can help their peers a lot.

You can divide students into groups based on whatever criteria makes sense (e.g., availability, topic, etc.). When I assign the global commodity analysis, I survey students to find out their top three choices of commodity and their top three choices of other students to have on their collaboration team. To help students get to know each other, I also require students to create a one minute video self-introduction to help their peers make informed judgments about their group preferences. I call this their collaboration statement. I use the student survey responses to assign groups and then require every group member to submit their own copy of the group's collaboration plan. The plan clarifies a few details about what kinds of collaboration are allowed versus not allowed, and it requires the students to indicate their collaboration plan for meeting (time and place) at least once per week.

I try to assign some weight to each of the assignments. The text always requires student to improve the previous assignment as the first part of each subsequent assignment, so it makes sense (to me) to weight the earliest assignment the least and increase the weigh for each subsequent assignment. Most kinds of analysis in this text have five to seven major parts; the global commodity market analysis is a little different. It only has two parts: (1) the market definition and (2) the market forecast. With only two parts, I just weight each part equally. I recommend reserving about 60 percent of the final grade to be based on the final paper and presentation.

Here are the weights I used when I teach the global commodity market analysis:

Collaboration Statement 2%

Survey 1%

Collaboration Plan 2%

Market Definition 15%

Market Forecast 15%

Paper 30%

Presentation 30%

TOTAL 100%

I recommend having the final two assignments (i.e., the paper and the presentation) due at the same time, about two weeks before final grades are due. I make the two assignments due at the same time because students often discover when they are finishing their presentations that they made mistakes on their paper. I have learned to advertise in the syllabus an earlier due date (e.g., two weeks before grades are due) and then as that date approaches I extend the due date by one week.

I typically host help sessions sessions weekly for about one hour per 20 students (e.g., two hours per week for 40 students). I tell students that they must attend at least five of these help sessions during the first 14 weeks of the semester. I do not assign any points to their attendance and do not require them to attend for any length of time, but I tell students they will not earn a passing grade if they do not attend at least five sessions. These sessions are for students to ask their own questions but also listen to other students ask questions. I have hosted these help sessions both virtually (e.g., via Zoom) and in-person.

Here is a sample syllabus in Word and PDF format when I taught the global commodity market analysis. Here is a link to the collaboration assignments and the collaboration plan (fillable PDF).

Here is a sample syllabus in Word and PDF format when I taught the multiple criteria decision analysis.

Upon request, I can also provide course shell integrations from Canvas. I built the course shell in Canvas, but I can export the shell as a file type (IMSCC Zip) that is (supposedly) agnostic to many other learning managements systems. The course shell should open without change if you use Canvas.

Text Availability and Updates

As noted in the Fair Use section of this text, the author and publisher intend for this text to be available without cost subject to certain limits on distribution. See the Fair Use section for details.

Also, as the author, I do make regular updates to this text. I may make editorial changes at anytime, but I usually limit significant changes to the the summer months (e.g., June and July) and the time between semesters (i.e., late December). These updates may affect your students if they are using the textbook during a period of updating. For that reason, I encourage instructors who are using this text to let me know.

Any part of the text that is labeled "Under Construction" will likely be undergoing frequent and regular change. I have an earlier (somewhat outdated) version of this text that describes how to conduct an historical market analysis and niche market analysis. Please contact me if you are interested in that now before I migrate and update that content for this version of the text.