Essential question: How can a consumer recognize contractual obligations and challenge incorrect or unfair charges?
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.
Mark price, duration, cancellation, renewal, privacy, arbitration, warranty, and liability clauses in a sample agreement and summarize risk.
Draft a complete billing-dispute letter with dates, amounts, evidence, requested remedy, and delivery record.
Instructional aim: Define the Week 10 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 preserves the agreement and statement, identifies the exact error and deadline, and requests a specific documented remedy.
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 “contract”? | C | Contract means a legally enforceable agreement requiring offer, acceptance, consideration, and other legal elements. |
| 2 | Which definition best matches “term”? | D | Term means a provision specifying duties, rights, price, duration, renewal, or remedy. |
| 3 | Which definition best matches “arbitration clause”? | D | Arbitration clause means a provision directing disputes to private arbitration rather than court, subject to law. |
| 4 | Which definition best matches “automatic renewal”? | B | Automatic renewal means continuation of a contract or subscription unless canceled under stated terms. |
| 5 | Which definition best matches “billing error”? | D | Billing error means an incorrect, unauthorized, duplicated, undelivered, or otherwise disputed charge. |
| 6 | Which definition best matches “chargeback”? | B | Chargeback means a card-network process through which a disputed transaction may be reversed under applicable rules. |
| 7 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 10? | B | Clicking agreement buttons can create binding obligations even when a consumer did not read the terms. |
| 8 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 10? | D | Duration, renewal, cancellation, payment, privacy, dispute, and liability terms deserve particular attention. |
| 9 | Which statement is most consistent with the evidence and reasoning developed in Week 10? | C | A successful billing dispute identifies the exact transaction, legal or contractual basis, evidence, requested remedy, and deadline. |
| 10 | Which action best demonstrates mastery of the Week 10 inquiry? | A | A student preserves the agreement and statement, identifies the exact error and deadline, and requests a specific documented remedy. |
Should companies be allowed to bind consumers to long terms through one-click acceptance?
5 points: clear claim, accurate disciplinary reasoning, two specific pieces of evidence, meaningful qualification or counterargument, and complete explanation.