Subject: Misleading Gradebook Calculations
11/19/2009
Kent Barclay
Associate Dean of Academic Technology
Wax Academic Center- AC015
Endicott College
376 Hale St.
Beverly, MA 01915
978-232-2282
kbarclay@endicott.edu
Question to ListServ:
I know there have been a lot of questions on the listserv re: Gradebook. It is a difficult tool for many faculty to work with so that is understandable. I have a question that comes up a lot from our faculty and students, (I apologize if this has been asked and answered in the past, but I looked through my saved emails from the listserv and couldn’t find reference to it) The Gradebook seems to give a running grade for the assignments that have been completed and graded based on the total course points or weights. In other words, as a very simple example, say there are two assignments each worth 50% of the total grade. The student completes the first assignment, gets a perfect 100% on it, but the grade still shows for her as an F because it is calculated that she has only earned 50 % of the total for the course so far. Isn’t there a way for the Gradebook to calculate the grade based only on the points or assignments that have already been completed up to that point? This is very misleading to students when they look at their grades sometime during the semester and see lower grades than they should be earning. If anyone has a work around or if this is a future version fix, please let me know.
Responses from ListServ:
from Peggy Johnson
peggy.johnson@tm.edu