Math 221 - Grading Percentages

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.

Daily Activities

• % Homework: Estimated to take roughly 90 minutes per assignment. These are due before we cover the material in class. You get a 15% bonus for work submitted before the class where we cover it. One extension of 5 days may be requested per assignment, but the request must be made within 7 days of the original due date.You should turn in work on paper for a separate grade. The three lowest grades will be dropped.
• % 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.

End-of-Chapter Activities

• % Technology Projects: These are group projects that are due the day of the exam. They are graded holistically on an awesome, good, okay, fair, poor, or none scale.
• % Chapter Exams: These are paper and pencil exams that cover some basic skills but focus on concepts and understanding. They will be placed in the testing center for anyone missing the scheduled day of the exam. 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. 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.

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%.