Essential question: What steps should a consumer take when debt becomes unaffordable or a collector makes a disputed claim?
Instructional caution: Distinguish factual definitions, legal holdings, economic relationships, value judgments, and policy preferences. Do not grade students for political viewpoint; grade evidence, accuracy, reasoning, citation, and disciplinary method.
Prioritize a fictional household’s debts and necessities, draft creditor communication, and identify legitimate assistance and warning signs.
Create a comparison matrix for self-negotiation, counseling, consolidation, settlement, and bankruptcy.
Instructional aim: Define the Week 9 problem, establish the relevant institutions or economic relationships, and construct an initial answer to the essential question.
Evidence of learning: Identify one distinction that prevents a common oversimplification of this topic.
Support: Provide a vocabulary preview, chunked text, text-to-speech, and claim/evidence sentence frames.
Extension: Identify a competing theoretical interpretation and describe what evidence could distinguish it.
Instructional aim: Evaluate a primary record, legal case, policy document, contract, or institutional source for authority, evidence, context, and limitation.
Evidence of learning: State one claim the focal record supports and one claim it cannot establish alone.
Support: Define specialized language, provide a structured annotation guide, and allow oral rehearsal before writing.
Extension: Locate a source from a different institutional or social position and explain how it confirms, complicates, or contradicts the first.
Instructional aim: Interpret a quantitative model, institutional process, financial calculation, or policy tradeoff without confusing description and causation.
Evidence of learning: Explain which conclusion remains valid after the changed assumption and which conclusion does not.
Support: Provide labeled examples, formulas or process steps, and a partially completed model.
Extension: Perform a sensitivity analysis or compare an alternative policy/institutional design.
Instructional aim: Construct and defend a precise claim using disciplinary evidence, a counterclaim, and a proportionate conclusion.
Evidence of learning: Explain why the counterclaim deserves a response rather than dismissal.
Support: Use claim-evidence-reasoning frames and permit an audio or oral draft before the final written product.
Extension: Rewrite the recommendation for an audience with a different role, jurisdiction, time horizon, or risk tolerance.
Instructional aim: Demonstrate weekly mastery, correct misconceptions, and transfer the central concept to a new case.
Evidence of learning: Apply the week’s reasoning to this mastery action: A student verifies the debt and collector, protects essential expenses, communicates in writing, and seeks qualified help before choosing settlement or bankruptcy.
Support: Allow extended time, reduced-distraction setting, read-aloud where appropriate, and repeated attempts after documented correction.
Extension: Write one high-quality examination question and an answer key explaining why each distractor is wrong.
Each principal assignment is worth 30 points: 8 accuracy, 8 evidence or calculation, 6 reasoning, 4 counterargument/limitation, and 4 clarity/citation. Use the course rubrics for expanded descriptors.
| # | Question | Answer | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Which definition best matches “delinquency”? | A | Delinquency means failure to make a required payment on time. |
| 2 | Which definition best matches “default”? | C | Default means failure to meet contractual repayment terms, often after specified delinquency. |
| 3 | Which definition best matches “debt collection”? | D | Debt collection means efforts to obtain payment of a debt, subject to applicable law. |
| 4 | Which definition best matches “credit counseling”? | A | Credit counseling means education and assistance with budgeting, repayment, and creditor negotiation. |
| 5 | Which definition best matches “debt settlement”? | A | Debt settlement means negotiation to satisfy a debt for less than the claimed balance, with risks and tax or credit consequences. |
| 6 | Which definition best matches “bankruptcy”? | B | Bankruptcy means a federal legal process providing structured treatment or discharge of eligible debts. |
| 7 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 9? | A | Ignoring debt usually reduces options; early contact and documentation are important. |
| 8 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 9? | C | Consumers should verify a collector, the debt, the amount, ownership, and legal deadlines before paying or disclosing information. |
| 9 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 9? | A | Bankruptcy can provide relief but has legal, credit, cost, asset, and eligibility consequences requiring qualified advice. |
| 10 | Which action best demonstrates mastery of the Week 9 inquiry? | A | A student verifies the debt and collector, protects essential expenses, communicates in writing, and seeks qualified help before choosing settlement or bankruptcy. |
What consumer protections are necessary when a person under financial stress has less bargaining power and information?
5 points: clear claim, accurate disciplinary reasoning, two specific pieces of evidence, meaningful qualification or counterargument, and complete explanation.