Weekly Status Checks (Fall 2020)

To help the mentors monitor your progress on your project, you’ll submit weekly status checks. We’ve included advice on how to use these wisely in How To: Use Your Status Checks Effectively. These status checks will ask four simple questions:

• What progress has been made in the past week?
• What challenges have been encountered in the past week?
• Do you have any new expectations that your final project will differ from what was described in your proposal?
• (For group projects) Have your team members been fulfilling their responsibilities?

Each question can generally be answered in only a sentence or two unless there is a more significant answer. It is crucial that you be honest in these status checks, however. If we observe that your progress is slow early on, we can mutually adjust expectations and come to a new agreement. However, if we discover later that your final project will differ because of a discrepancy between your plan and your progress that you did not disclose when it arose, your final grade will be affected.

Submission Instructions

You will submit these status checks via your mentor threads; simply post the status check as a follow-up to your existing thread with your mentor. The mentors will mark separately how many status checks have been submitted, and this count will be used as your final status check grade (worth 5% of your average). Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Weekly Status Checks are evaluated simply for participation. Completing all eight status checks will grant full credit for the status check portion of the grade; completing seven out of eight will grant 87.5% credit; completing six out of eight will grant 75% credit; and so on.