EE204: Business Management for
Electrical Engineers and Computer Scientists

EE204S SCPD

EE204S is being offered as a separate class through SCPD.

If you are a currently enrolled HCP/NDO student and you have not been contacted by a TA, please email the teaching staff.

SCPD Grading Formula

There are Midterm and Final papers on a case sudy in lieu of midterm and final examinations. This course is offered on a letter grade basis only. Your grade will be weighted as follows:

Class Participation (answers to pop up questions and Piazza comments) (50%)

First written case (25%)

Second written case (25%)

If at any point during the quarter you would like to see us about your class participation, written work, course matters, or anything else, please contact us after class, by phone, or by email to set up an appointment and we will work to accommodate your needs.

Class Schedule

The class schedule and link to purchase the course reader can be found here.

Each case in the schedule has study questions. Answers to the study questions are not required but will help you better understand the cases. You are encouraged to use them to structure your thinking about the material and in-class discussions as you watch the videos

Class Participation

  1. In-video pop-up questions (3 questions for each lecture): HCP/NDO students are required to read the reading materials for each lecture before watching the video for that lecture. There will be in total three in-video pop-up questions for each lecture, which are open-ended, related to the reading materials and in-class discussions.
  2. Commenting on other HCP/NDO students’ answers to pop-up questions in the Piazza forum (at least 2 comment for each lecture)

Due Dates

For Tuesday lectures, the question answers are due at 8PM PST on Wednesday in the same week. Comments on the answers for the Tuesday lectures are due at 8PM PST on Saturday in the same week. 

For Thursday lectures, the question answers are due at 8PM on Friday in the same week. Comments on the answers for the Thursday lectures are due at 8PM PST on the Monday of the following week. 

For example, for 3/29 lecture, question answers are due 3/30 8PM PST, comments are due 4/2 8PM PST. For 3/31 lecture, answers are due 4/1 8PM PST, comments are due 4/4 8PM PST.

Criteria

Criteria that we use to grade the answers to the pop up questions and Piazza comments:

  1. Are they clear and relevant to the current discussion?
  2. Does the student support the comments well using case facts and tools developed in the class?
  3. Does the student explore all the implications and the importance of the comments?
  4. Are the comments insightful? Do they broaden the discussion and clarify the issues?
  5. Are comments complete and concise (do the comments cover the point as well as possible in as few words as possible)?

Students will receive feedback on their individual classroom participation at the midpoint in the class schedule. Comments made are monitored and averaged. The students' average contribution is grouped into one of three categories below. Students will receive feedback in the form of a number corresponding to one of these groups. The way to interpret your score is:" On average my comment is a 1, 2, or 3."

 

1) Average comment satisfies 1 and part of 2 of the above criteria that we use to measure effective class participation.
2) Good comment satisfies 1-3.
3) Excellent comment satisfies 1-5.

After every class the professors meet and use the above criteria to assign each comment a 1, 2, or 3 (with an approximate distribution of 10%, 75%, and 15%). Each student receives credit for only his or her best comment from that class.

Because we want the quality of comments to be more important than the quantity of comment, at the end of the quarter each student's lowest 9 participation grades (out of the roughly 18 class sessions) are dropped. The remaining grades are summed for each student and then normalized ((student's grade - class mean)/standard deviation). All grades (participation, and both written cases) are normalized to ensure that they can be properly weighted to determine overall grades.

Class participation represents a major component (50%) of your grade in this course. You will receive a quartile ranking of your class participation just before the half way point in the quarter.

Access to the videos and pop-up questions

In order to see the pop-up questions, HCP/NDO students should access the videos through scpd.stanford.edu, and log in with mystanfordconnection account. The videos and in-video questions can be accessed by computers as well as mobile devices.

If you download the videos and watch offline, you won’t see pop-up questions. To answer the pop-up questions if you watched a downloaded video, log in to scpd.stanford.edu, click on the lecture video. The questions for a particular lecture are listed under the “Quizzes” tab. Clicking on the time point of a question will take you to 3 seconds before that question pops up so that you can get some context.
  • Computer interface: The “Quizzes” tab is to the right of the video window. 
  • Tablet interface: A red “Quizzes” button hovers on the right side of the video, clicking on it will expand the quiz list 
  • Phone interface: quizzes won’t pop up in video on phone, but are listed underneath the video. Click on the red “Take lecture quizzes” button will open up a new tab listing all the questions for that lecture. You can type in or voice in your answers.

Access to Piazza

How to make comments in Piazza:

  • All HCP/NDO students’ answers to the questions of a lecture will be posted on Piazza by TA immediately after the due time. The post will appear on the left panel of the Piazza web interface. To read the post and make a comment, click on the post, and then on the right panel type in your comments in the text box under “student’s answer”. 
  • Comments should be made in the following format: the name (first name + last initial) of the student to whom you want to address, your comment. Example: Minmin H, I like your point on Apple’s strategy.

If you cannot access the videos:

If for whatever reason, you are not able to access the video or pop-up question list, send the TAs an email (see contacts on homepage). The TAs will send you a link for the questions.

Additional Extra Credit

A variety of extra-credit opportunities are available for EE204S, including the following:

Team Building

Teams are an integral part of EE204S, for discussing readings & cases, participating in the simulation, and completing the two major written assignments for the course.

EE204S students will be assigned to teams of 2-4. While local students are invited to EE204 class receptions, teams must be formed with other EE204S (online) students.

Bay-area EE204S students are invited to attend both EE204 class receptions. See the assignment calendar for details.

Honor Code

All students, whether enrolled for the live or SCPD course offering, are expected to abide by the Stanford Honor Code.

SCPD Resources

SCPD Website

Michelle Lucas, SCPD Graduate Program Manager

Email: malucas |at| stanford |dot| edu

Phone: (650) 444-5328

SCPD Student Services Team (enrollment/registration)

Email: scpd-customerservice |at| stanford |dot| edu

Phone: (650) 725-3016