The Chisinau School of Advanced Journalism will award these grades:
- Excellent; - Very Good;
- Good;
- Not Satisfactory.
And it will award these graduation certificates:
Instructors (or teams) can devise their own grading systems for a course. But at the end of the course, the students’ grades should be reported on a scale of 0 to 3, with 0 representing not satisfactory; and 3 representing “excellent.” The grades do not need to be whole numbers; a grade of 2.4 for a course would be acceptable. While instructors should not give unreasonably high grades, they should realize that the students in this program have been through a rigorous selection process and are expected to do well. Faculty members should record the grades for assignments and their daily progress reports on the password-protected part of the IJC Web site. They should also keep their own records of the grades. Students are expected to keep the work handed back to them; the instructor or the team of instructors will look at that portfolio of work at the end of the course to determine the student’s progress.- Graduation.
- Graduation With Honors.
- Graduation With High Honors.
Course grades will be based on things like practical assignments, tests, and class participation, depending on the course. Instructors will base a student’s grades on the quality of the student’s work and on the student's improvement during the course. That way, for example, someone with no broadcasting experience will not start out with a big deficit compared with someone who has been working in that field.
Instructors may emphasize different things in determining grades, but in general:
- The most valuable trait a journalist can have is personal integrity. Any academic dishonesty merits a 0 for the assignment. It may also lead to a lower or failing grade for the course or dismissal from the program; such decisions will be made by the director. Academic dishonesty includes plagiarism (presenting someone else’s work as your own without giving credit to the actual source – a problem that has cropped up more frequently in classrooms since the advent of the Internet), cheating, deliberately distorting information, or fabricating information. A minor instance of dishonesty (e.g., exaggerating an excuse for being late) will bring a warning.
- Plagiarism also includes presenting information from news agencies or other news media without crediting the source. If a reporter cites information from a BBC interview of Vladimir Voronin, for example, the information must be attributed to Varonin, and the BBC must be given credit for conducting the interview.
- Any serious error – for example, misspelling a name or getting an address wrong – will result in a 0 for the assignment. Such errors may seem trivial, but they erode a publication’s or a station’s hard-earned credibility.
- A well-constructed lead, which covers all the essential information but is still easy to read, is essential for a well-written article for print or broadcast.
- The lead must be backed up. That means that there must be supporting material in the piece to support the ideas expressed in the lead. That material should be presented in a logical order, with appropriate transitions as the piece moves from one topic to another.
- If a reporter is presenting information about an event that he or she witnessed, or is reporting accepted or generally known information (for example, Moldova was once part of the Soviet Union, or abortion is a hotly contested issue in many countries), he or she does not need to attribute the information to a source. But all of the other information in the piece must be attributed to sources. That applies to information quoted directly (the exact wording of the source, set off by quotation marks), as well as to paraphrased information from a source. When information from a source is paraphrased (rendered with different wording and not put into quotation marks), the writer must be careful not to distort the source’s meaning or to make the source sound more certain about something than the source actually is. It is important to keep a direct quotation or paraphrased material in its original context. And each source cited must be appropriate: for example, it would not be appropriate to quote a doctor about a burglary suspect’s chances of going to prison. It would be appropriate to ask the doctor about the suspect’s injuries. Anonymous sources should not be used without an instructor’s permission; the instructor must know the source’s identity. Students who are confused about attribution policies should not plunge ahead and take a guess about what to do – ask the instructor!
- The reporter should strive for balance in any news article. That requires news judgment and analytical ability on the part of the reporter. Giving equal treatment to those who say the Earth is flat and those who say it is round would not produced a balanced piece. The reporter should also be aware of his or her biases and opinions and should work hard to keep them out of any news article in order to produce an objective piece – a piece that is as fair as possible.
- If a reporter handles the essentials of news writing well in an article and uses language in a way that brings elegance and grace to a piece, that reporter deserves the highest grade.
- When students are still learning the basics of reporting and news writing, they will make many beginners’ mistakes. Instructors are encouraged to mark those errors and allow the students to rewrite pieces before grades are assigned. An instructor may even decide to drop some early grades for everyone in a course when assigning the overall course grade. Serious dishonesty, however, cannot be overlooked, even at the beginning of a course.
Recommendations on awarding graduation certificates will be made at the end of the program by a committee made up of faculty, the director, and the academic director; the final decisions must be approved by the faculty as a whole. The decisions will be primarily based on each student's course grades, but an assessment of each student's commitment to and suitability for journalism will also be taken into consideration.
Attendance at the lessons
Absences and late arrivals will be recorded by the instructor at the beginning of every class session and reported to the academic director. They are not cumulative: each student starts each course module with a clean slate.
Absences, lateness: The student’s job is to attend all classes and do all of the work. A student with an unexcused absence or a student who has been late to class three times without a valid excuse must talk to the director before re-entering the class and must make up all work missed (extra work at teacher's discretion) within seven days. The student’s grade for that work will be lowered because of the absences or tardiness. To be excused, absences must be approved before they occur by the instructor, the director or the academic director. An absence can be excused for a serious reason, such as a death in the family or an illness. Whether an excuse for lateness is valid is up to the instructor.
A second unexcused absence, or fourth instance of being late means the student must talk to the director, and the student’s results for that course will be lowered by one grade. A third unexcused absence, or a fifth instance of being late: the student must talk to the director, who will decide whether the student fails the course. A student who fails a course could be allowed, at the director’s discretion, to do extra projects during the winter and spring breaks to get a “satisfactory” for the course.
Any student who thinks a grade or a disciplinary action is unfair may appeal to a committee made up of the instructors for that course, another instructor chosen by the student, the academic director, and two students chosen by the person who is appealing. The appeal must be filed with the director within seven days of receiving the grade or disciplinary action.
