Study.com Writing assignment grades

[dfrecore]

I took the BSBA capstone and thought that the grading was very fair. A lot less time spent on stupid stuff, and more spent on did I thoroughly answer the questions. So YMMV on that. I did not take a Study.com or SL course with any assignments, just going by what people on here are saying. But I did not have any of the issues you're talking about. I got 100% on every case study. To be honest, I did enjoy those the most out of the course, and I was thorough. But I think I'm a pretty good writer to begin with, so maybe that just didn't apply to me. For the discussion questions (I took Guided Study), I did get marked down on those, but not for anything silly - it was all about thoroughness in answering questions. My final paper also did not get marked down for anything related to grammar or spelling - it was all based on the content of the writing.

If I was not already a good writer, I would continue writing papers in preparation for the capstone, as others on here have advised. But be aware that you may get an advisor who doesn't care about the same stuff the SL/Study.com graders are looking for, so don't think that learning their "system" and getting great grades there has a direct correlation to what will happen in the capstone.

[Supermind]

Thanks bjcheung, Merlin, jsh1138. This is very good advice. As for academic sources, all my papers had at least 10 sources. I used quite credible sources like Harvard educational review, Harvard Business Review etc. The instructors used to always comment that they were happy with my choice of sources. All my papers were close to 2500 words, when the requirement was only 1500-2000. On two occasions, I ‘over wrote’ and elaborated excessively, as I did not know how much was being expected of me. They took note of that and reduced my points. There were some minor APA convention mistakes. So, it was a good learning experience.

[jsh1138]

For sure if you are not a good writer you need as much practice as possible. The liberal arts capstone is ALOT of writing. Same thing with citations, you are expected to have your APA or whatever down pat and they will take points if you don't.

The capstone says your paper has to be at least 25 pages but I have never talked to anyone who only turned in 25. For most people it's more like 50 and for some it's more like 100. Some of the sample papers people have posted here are well into the 70's.

So people need to realize that you have an "at least" 25 page requirement but you also have lots of other requirements to meet and depending on your topic it might not be practical to meet each of those in so small a space. Basically your final paper is your module papers pasted together and cleaned up a little, so if it takes you more than 5 pages per module to satisfy that module, your final paper will be longer. So people need to just bear in mind that you have to do alot of writing in some cases.

Now obviously if you're a creative writing major you can just write the 25 pages and boom you're done. But if you're a history major, you have to go find some sources, properly read them, then cite them, etc. It can be time consuming, especially since they expect you to put some amount of original material in there.

So for instance with my paper, I had whatever I had, 20 sources or something, and you have to either read all of those or read the relevant parts at least, and that can take longer than the writing. Then they want you to say something new about it, and good luck finding a new twist on a history paper. So really most of the stress comes from the requirements and not actually just from the pure number of pages, which are doable.

[Ideas]

So you don't have to actually do original data collection like their FAQ seems to say?

(Oh, I posted the FAQ quotes in a different thread.)

[jsh1138]

it depends on the subject, tbh. you have to check with your adviser too, so it partly depends on them

[Supermind]

I passed Business 113 today with only turning in 2 out of 3 assignments. I've already passed my Capstone though. If you're just starting out, I agree you should write as much as possible but at this point I'm knocking out 12 page papers in an afternoon and I don't see any reason to write a business memo if I don't have to. The 30 min I spend on that I could spend on my next course, or sleeping. Just my .02

Does study.com allow that? I am asking this because their Adv Social Psychology course (PSY-316) writing requirements are so confusing. I have sought clarification as to what exactly they would like me to write about, and no one has replied yet, even though 10 days have passed. This course is not even upper level. I would really like to be spared the trouble of writing a paper in this case.

[jsh1138]

well they just allowed me to pass business 113 with 2 of 3 assignments turned in, so yeah they allow it. I mean it's on my ACE transcript already

my experience with Study.com has always been that once you have enough points to pass, they pass you. Depending on the class the grading rubric might be different, but I have never had the experience of having a passing grade but them insisting I do further assignments anyway. Maybe it's happened to someone else but not to me.

[bjcheung77]

It really depends on the quizzes/final and assignment scoring on the syllabus, for example Business 113: Business Communications has the following points: Quizzes 100, Assignment 1 is 30, 2 is 30, 3 is 40 and the final is 100 points. So, if you have a perfect score for quizzes/final and 15 points for the first assignment. You can skip assignment two and three as you have over 210 points. Again, it all depends on the scoring you have on the quiz/final exam, if the first assignment gets you past that 210, the second and subsequent assignments are "not needed".