Grade weighting

"Grade weighting" refers to how you use the points a student earns on course assignments to calculate his overall, final course grade. You can weight all assignment points equally or use assignment groups to weight certain kinds of assignments more heavily than others. For simplicity's sake, we'll refer to these two methods as Points-based and Groups-based:

• Points-based means that you don't use assignment groups. All assignment points are worth the same when used to calculate the final grade. If you have a quiz worth 20 points and a reading worth 20 points, they both count the same. If the final exam is worth 100 points and the final term paper is worth 100 points, they count the same. And in this example, the final exam is worth five times as much as the reading.
• Groups-based means that you use assignment groups. This lets you weight certain assignments more heavily—that is, more important—than others by giving the groups different percentages of the final grade. Let's say you view student writing as a better indicator of learning than test performance—you could set up your assignment groups like so:
  • Writing is worth 50% of the final grade. The Term Paper (100 points), together with other writing assignments, is in this group.
  • Tests is worth 25% of the final grade. The Final Exam (100 points), together with other tests and quizzes, is in this group.
  • Participation is worth 15% of the final grade. The Reading (20 points), together with other similar assignments, is in this group.
  • (And just to let you know that you can also do this: Attendance is worth 10% of the grade.)
  In this scenario, the Term Paper will weigh more in the course grade calculation as the Final Exam, even though they have the same number of points. This will be explained in greater detail below.

After you've read this article, have a look at this one to see how extra credit assignments and assignment groups figure in to the course grade calculation.

Assignment points and your school's grade scale

First, let's talk about assignment points: they are the units used to score an assignment grade. You can enter whatever you want for points, but typically the number of points on an assignment reflects how fine-grained you want your evaluation of the student's work to be. So, a 10-question quiz might be worth 10 points—one point per question—while an essay might be worth 100 points to give you the flexibility to award 89 points to one student and 93 points to another.

And, depending on your grading method, points can indicate the relative importance of an assignment. In general, that 100-point essay will prove more important to the course grade than the 10-point quiz.

When you grade an assignment, you're simply awarding the student a certain percentage of the assignment's points. In turn, Populi divides the earned grade points by the assignment's point total, then multiplies that by 100 to create a percentage. The percentage is then translated to a letter grade based on your school's grade scale. While you, as a faculty user, don't have access to your school's grade scale, this article has some details that may prove helpful in regard to how number/percentage grades translate into letter grades.

Say you have a quiz with 22 short-answer questions, each worth 1 point, as well as four extra credit questions (each also worth 1 point). You've entered “22” in the Points field:

1. A student gets 19 questions correct. Populi does the math:
   • (19 ÷ 22) * 100 = 86.4
   The student is graded 86.4%.
2. Another student gets 16 correct answers, partial credit (half a point) for another question, and correctly answers 1 extra credit question. The math runs thusly:
   • (16 + 0.5 + 1) ÷ 22 * 100 = 79.5
   The student is graded 79.5%.
3. Another student totally nailed the quiz: 22 correct answers and all four extra credit questions answered correctly. The math goes as follows:
   • (26 ÷ 22) * 100 = 118.2
   Her grade is a stellar 118.2%. (So you know, the maximum number of points you can award on any given assignment is the double of its points.)

Points-based grading

To use points-based grade weighting, leave the “Other” assignment group at 100% and then add individual assignments as needed:

Points-based grading calculates the course grade with some simple arithmetic: it divides the total number of assignment points a student earns by the total number of assignment points you've entered across all assignments. Then it multiplies the result by 100. Here's a scenario:

1. You've set up your assignments with a variety of points—the Final Exam is worth 100 points, eight quizzes are each worth 25 points, weekly readings are worth 10 apiece, and yet others worth 40, or 15, or 60, etc. When added together, the total number of points across all assignments is 1275.
2. You grade a student for all the assignments. She gets 89 on the Final Exam, gets 20 points on one quiz, 22 on another, and so on. She ends up earning a total of 1154 points across all the assignments.
3. Her course grade is calculated thusly:

Her final course grade will end up being 90.51.

Groups-based grading

To use Groups-based grading, create as many assignment groups as you need and then divide the percentage weights among them as appropriate:

Here's how those calculations work:

1. Each individual assignment group's value is calculated by dividing earned assignment points by total points ("N" refers to the assignment group's calculated value):

(EARNED AGPs ÷ TOTAL AGPs) = N

2. Then each assignment group's N value is multiplied by the group's percentage of the final grade. Those values are then added together to get the student's grade:

(N1 x AG%) + (N2 x AG%) + (N3 x AG%) + etc. = COURSE GRADE

Example time! We'll provide two to illustrate how assignment group weighting can impact the final grade.

• You create three assignment groups: Tests, Papers, and Participation.
• In Example Course 1, the groups are weighted as follows: Tests 20%, Papers 50%, and Participation 30%.
• In Example Course 2, the groups are weighted as follows: Tests 45%, Papers 25%, and Participation 30%.
• In both examples, the total number of assignment group points is as follows: Tests 350, Papers 500, Participation 600.
• Student Janey Collins earns these points in each assignment group: Tests 255, Papers 473, Particpation 527.

And now, the calculations:

• The assignment group calculations for both examples:

(255 ÷ 350) = 72.86

(473 ÷ 500) = 94.60

(527 ÷ 600) = 87.83

• Example Course 1:

72.86 * 20% = 14.57

94.60 * 50% = 47.30

87.83 * 30% = 26.35

14.57 + 47.30 + 26.35 = COURSE GRADE: 88.22

• Example Course 2:

72.86 * 45% = 32.79

94.60 * 25% = 23.65

87.83 * 30% = 26.35

32.79 + 23.65 + 26.35 = COURSE GRADE: 82.79

Postscript: a brief note about excused assignments

When you excuse an assignment (by leaving the student's grade blank or entering "E" in the grading field), that removes the assignment from the total assignment points in the grading calculation. Let's say you have a 10-point quiz that you excuse for a particular student:

• In the points-based example given above, the total assignment points would be 1265 instead of 1275.
• In the groups-based examples given above, the total points for the "Tests" assignment group would be 340 instead of 350.