The class was able to roll their own grading scheme this semester. This document will be modified with the actual values after the class has decided.
- 38.95% Homework: Estimated to take roughly 90 minutes per assignment. Due before we cover the material in class with a 15% bonus for portions worked before then. One extension of 5 days may be requested per assignment within 7 days of original due date, but no bonus will be earned for material completed during the extension. The three lowest grades will be dropped.
- 7.58% Activities and Quizzes: These are conducted in class and may not be made up if absent during the activity or quiz. You should read the section before you come to class and be prepared to answer questions over the major concepts. The three lowest grades will be dropped.
- 12.89% Technology Projects: These are normally group projects that are completed announced and worked on during class and due later that day. They are graded on the holistic scale of awesome, good, okay, fair, poor, or none. These are prime material for exams and may be turned in late up until the exam on that chapter for a possible reduction in grade. None of these grades will be dropped.
- 40.58% Chapter Exams: These are paper and pencil exams that may cover some basic skills but primarily focus on concepts and understanding. They will be placed in the testing center for anyone missing the scheduled day of the exam and you have until the start of the second class period after the scheduled exam to complete the test. If you complete it before the start of the second class period following the exam, then there is no penalty for being late, but if you fail to complete the exam before the start of the second class period following the exam, then you will get a zero (0) for the exam. None of these grades will be dropped..
Homework
Principle
Homework is due before we cover the material in class. You are expected to read the material and attempt the problems ahead of time so that we can focus on the deeper concepts and understanding in class.
As an incentive to do this, people who complete the homework before it is due receive a 15% bonus on the portion of the homework that is completed early. People who wait until we cover the material in class will need to ask WebAssign for an extension of 5 days and this extension can be asked for any time in the 7 days following the original due date. The extension is automatically granted, so you do not have to wait for the instructor to respond.
Technical Details
The principle is that completing the homework early gives you a 15% bonus. Implementing that in WebAssign is not straightforward. When you ask for an extension, it resets the due date so that any work done with an extension gets that 15% bonus.
The goal is that you get the 15% bonus if you do the work early and get full points if you do it after we cover the material in class. To accomplish this with WebAssign, we have to implement a penalty on extensions to cancel out the 15% bonus.
A 15% bonus is 115% of the original value or 1.15 as a multiplier. To cancel that out, we need to divide the points possible by 1.15. 100%/1.15 or about 86.9565%. WebAssign wants the amount to subtract, not the amount to multiply by, so we deduct 13.0435%. Note that the 13.0435% is rounded and that more significant figures are entered into WebAssign to try to make it come out as close to 100% as possible.
Work turned in early gets at 15% bonus and work turned in late gets a 13.0435% penalty, but since all since all work is considered early, the late work really gets 100% of the point value and early work gets 115% of the point value.
The bonus is applied to just the portion of the homework that is turned in early, so do what you can before class and the rest after class. Here are some examples to help you understand.
- A student who gets 80% of the work correct before it is due gets 80%*1.15=92% for the grade.
- A student who gets 80% of the work correct after requesting an extension gets 80%*1.15/1.15 = 80% for the grade.
- A student who gets 80% of the work correct before it is due and the rest of it correct after requesting an extension gets 80%*1.15 + 20%*1.00 = 112%
- A student who gets 0% of the work correct before it is due and 80% of the work correct after requesting an extension gets 80%.