BUS320 Week 2 planning manual

1. Capture the live Week 2 packet

Create one row for every visible activity. Record its exact name, type, complete instructions, rubric or grading criteria, points and course weight, due date with time zone, permitted and required resources, length and file format, discussion reply rules, group or supervisor dependencies, attempt limits, submission location, and instructor announcements. Save the rubric version with the working file.

2. Translate criteria into visible proof

Rewrite each criterion as a testable question: what must the reader see to award this row? Pair it with the concept, evidence, example or calculation, reasoning step, and location where the proof will appear. This prevents a polished response from missing a small but expensive instruction. When the Week contains several activities, map each separately before deciding the order of work.

Reading the rubric row by row against returned feedback

By the second week something has usually come back: a grade, a comment, or at least a visible score on a small item. Read the current criteria with the returned work beside them and match each instructor comment to the row it belongs to. Comments seldom name a row. A note asking for more depth almost always maps to a specific analysis or application criterion, and a note about sources maps to the evidence row, so the translation has to be done deliberately rather than assumed.

Then quantify. Write the points earned and the points available for every row of the returned item. What matters is not the total but where the loss concentrated. Two points lost on formatting is a habit to fix in an afternoon; two points lost twice on the same analysis row is a method problem that will repeat every week until the method itself changes.

Carry that diagnosis into the current grading criteria. Mark each row as one the student already satisfies reliably, one that cost points last time, or one that is new. Draft the repeat-loss rows first and give them the longest revision pass. Where the returned feedback and the posted criteria appear to disagree, the registered classroom settles it, so raise the question through the official course channel instead of choosing between them privately.

3. Apply the management and organizational decisions method

For BUS320 Principles of Marketing, the working focus is this: Define the business problem, affected stakeholders, alternatives, evidence, resource consequence, risk, recommendation, and measure of success.

Challenge the main assumption, compare at least one viable alternative, quantify where the record permits, and attach a realistic implementation and measurement plan.

Use course materials first when the live instructions require them. Add outside evidence only when permitted, verify every source directly, and keep notes that distinguish the source's claim from the student's interpretation. For calculations or structured analyses, retain inputs, units, assumptions, intermediate steps, and an independent check.

Worked reasoning: testing a claim about why buyers buy

The second week is where a routine either forms or does not, and in a principles of marketing course the routine that pays is refusing to accept a motive claim without testing it. Suppose the registered activity asks the student to explain a purchase decision, whether their own or one they observed. The unstable version simply asserts the motive and moves on: customers buy this brand because of quality.

Apply the method instead. The business problem is not the purchase itself; it is the decision a marketer would take if the motive claim were true. Stakeholders include the buyer, anyone who influenced the choice, and the seller who set the price and chose the place. Alternatives means the options the buyer genuinely considered and rejected, which is the part most drafts skip entirely. A motive claim that cannot name the rejected alternatives is a guess wearing the clothes of an explanation.

Evidence at this stage is usually a mixture of the buyer's stated reason and their observable behavior, and the two frequently disagree. A buyer who says price decided the matter but drove past two cheaper options has revealed something the stated reason conceals. Record both, then say plainly which one the recommendation rests on and why that one is more credible here.

Resource consequence and risk follow directly. If a marketer acted on the stated motive when the real driver was convenience, what would the wasted spend buy? Then close on the measure. A motive claim becomes testable the moment the student names the observation that would prove it wrong, such as a switch rate that fails to move after a quality message runs. Keep the full eight steps in the notes and put into the draft only what the posted prompt asks for.

4. Build a student-owned response

Draft from the evidence map rather than from a generic sample. Open each section with its purpose, make the claim proportional to the evidence, explain the relationship the rubric asks for, and close with the decision, implication, or transition the reader needs. A tutor may demonstrate a parallel problem, question the logic, or comment on a student draft; the student's own judgment, context, language, verification, and final version must remain visible.

Primary and secondary evidence, and where each belongs

Marketing draws on two families of evidence, and a stabilizing routine keeps them apart. Secondary evidence already exists: peer-reviewed studies, government statistics such as census or labor data, industry reports, trade publications, and company disclosures. Primary evidence is gathered by the student, whether an observation, an interview, a short survey, or a documented visit. Scholarly weight sits with peer-reviewed work, yet a carefully documented primary observation is often the most persuasive material in an early submission because it is specific and checkable.

Handle the two families differently inside the draft. Secondary evidence enters as a cited claim with its date and its scope stated, since a statistic drawn from one country or one year cannot carry a general argument. Primary evidence enters with its method attached: what was observed, when, how often, and what its limits are. A single conversation is never a market finding, and labeling it as one costs more credibility than the sentence was worth.

The habit that stabilizes the term is a running source log with four columns: the citation, the exact claim taken, the page or location, and the paragraph where it will be used. Build the log while reading rather than afterward. Paraphrase into the log instead of pasting, so the draft never absorbs another writer's sentence structure by accident. Quote only where the original wording is itself the point, keep quotations short, and cite paraphrase as carefully as quotation. Settle the citation style and any source restrictions from the live instructions before the log grows, because reformatting twenty entries later costs time the Week does not have.

5. Run the Week 2 quality gate

Compare the finished work line by line with the live instructions and rubric. Check factual support, evidence currency, calculations, citations, headings, file type, accessibility, confidentiality, originality, and the stated audience. Confirm that replies, approvals, group actions, proctored steps, or supervised requirements have actually been completed by the student where the registered Week requires them.

Three pitfalls that destabilize Week 2

The first pitfall is reading feedback for tone rather than instruction. A short comment can land like a verdict, and the reaction is usually to rewrite everything or to change nothing at all. The fix is to convert each comment into a concrete action with a criterion row attached, discard the emotional reading entirely, and keep that action list open in front of the next draft.

The second pitfall is a discussion reply that simply agrees. Replies that restate a classmate's point approvingly earn the lowest level on most participation criteria because they add no content a grader can score. The fix is to reply with something visible: an alternative interpretation, a counterexample drawn from a different market or category, or a source that qualifies the original claim. Keep the required reply count, the timing, and any length rule from the live instructions inside the weekly plan so the reply is not written at the last hour.

The third pitfall is letting the source pile grow without a decision rule. By the second week many students have twenty tabs open and no filter for closing any of them. The fix is to set the inclusion rule before reading rather than during it, usually source type, a recency window, and relevance to one specific claim, then close whatever fails the rule instead of saving it on the theory that it might become useful later.

6. Submit and close the loop

The student performs the final upload or entry, opens the submitted artifact to confirm it is readable, and saves the receipt. When a grade or feedback arrives, record the criterion-level result, instructor comment, required correction, and lesson for Week 3. If an attempt is missing, late, or technically broken, use Aspen's official channel immediately rather than assuming the gradebook will repair itself.

Source boundary

Aspen University's official FAQ verifies that courses run eight weeks and that each Week's activities are organized in the online-classroom syllabus. The active catalog verifies this course code and title. Neither public source identifies the student's current Week 2 activity, so this manual never assigns it one.

Week 2 questions