Calculating Your Grade
Go to Quest for all of your assignment scores. I do NOT use BlackBoard!Please note that Quest does NOT calculate your overall course grade (score) - I do that via my own local files. I DO extract your SCORES (percentages and in some cases, RAW scores) from Quest for each assignment though.
| Exam Curves Please use the following add-on percentage points for each of your exams to get the "official gradebook" score (Quest does NOT do this). DO find your PERCENT score from Quest, then add the following amounts to those scores and you'll have your official gradebook score. |
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| Exam 1 | Exam 2 | Exam 3 | Exam 4 | Final |
| zero | zero | zero | zero | +5 |
| Grade Cut-Offs | |||
| no such A+ | B+ ≥ 84.67 | C+ ≥ 74.67 | D+ ≥ 64.67 |
| A ≥ 91.33 | B ≥ 81.33 | C ≥ 71.33 | D ≥ 61.33 |
| A- ≥ 88.00 | B- ≥ 78.00 | C- ≥ 68.00 | D- ≥ 58.00 |
| F< 58.00 |
| Your Overall SCORE for the COURSE Something interesting goes here |
|
| ALEKS | 5% |
| Homework (best 10 out of 13) |
5% |
| iClicker | 5% |
| Exams | 55% or 35% |
| Final | 30% or 50% |
Note 2: Remember to add the curves to exam scores before you average.
Note 3: IF your Final is higher than your exam average, it will count 50% and your exam average 35%. IF your Final is lower than your exam average, it will count 30% and your exam average 55%.
YOUR FINAL LETTER GRADE
You now KNOW the curves so you can calculate your grade. You must make at least the cut-off score or higher to get the appropriate grade. Yes, some students will miss the cut-off by as little as a tenth of a point. Please read the following about being on the bubble.
On the Bubble - Borderline cases for letter grades
What is "on the bubble"? The bubble is when you have an overall score of 79.83 and the break for getting a "B-" in the course is set at 80.00. It simply means that you have NOT met the criteria for a particular letter grade but are very very close - as in a few 1/10ths or even 1/100ths of a point. What's my method for determining bubble cases?
First, I look at your score on the final exam. If you did much better on the final than other work AND it is considerably higher than the grade break you will receive the higher grade. I also look at what your score was on the dropped exam, along with how many homeworks you did. I take a look at your iclicker participation. You should know that anything more than about 0.3-0.5 is really not that close.
There you have some of the criteria for beating the bubble. The only SURE way to beat the bubble is to NEVER be on it to begin with. Stay on the high side of the grade breaks and you'll never have to worry about these details. Plus, now that we're using the +/- system for letter grades, there is even less chance you'll get bumped up a notch.