Not every instructor at our institution uses the same grading scale. It would be great if the lead faculty member for each class could specify the grading scale for that course instead of everyone at the whole institution having to use the same scale.
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Votes
18 comments
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Brian Dunbar There could still be a "default" scale that is the primary one that most of our profs use. If you don't want the default scale, you could activate an alternative scale.
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Dana Schmitz Yes, I just posted a similar request to allow course by course grading scales as opposed to term by term.
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James Hi Brian,
Well, I think our concern with this is that the student would receive one grade on the course, and another on his or her transcript... since the transcript needs to run off of the official grade scale to be consistent. I'd imagine that students would find this confusing (especially if the transcript grade was lower than the course grade)!
Thanks!
James
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Brian Dunbar James,
Not sure I follow. If a B represents 3.0, why does it matter which scale was used to achieve that B?
I'm guessing that the transcript is taken from a number instead of the actual letter grade, which is unfortunate. It would be great if the transcript could be run off of a letter grade key instead of a grading scale - this way there is never a concern over the accuracy of the transcript. Simply, A = 4.0, A- = 3.67, B+ = 3.33, etc.
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Shane Flynn @Brian - I think that James is actually saying that the "official" final grade for a student is a percentage for the class. The transcript just renders the letter grade (and numeric value of that letter) on the fly. @James - Is that correct?
If it is, what happens if we change our grade scale in 5 years? Maybe our students perform so badly we decide to make an "A" = 80%-100%. Would Populi change the entire history of grades earned to reflect the new scale?
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Brian Dunbar I see what you're saying, Shane. I guess it just makes more sense to me if the "official" finale grade for a student is the letter, not the percentage. Then we never run into issues where transcripts say one thing and classes say another.
This is an extremely important discussion for me personally because our institution used one scale for this past summer term and then adopted a new one beginning this fall. If what you're suggesting is the case, then we've already created conflicts between class grades and transcripts.
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Shane Flynn @Brian - I agree with you. I think the official, registered, saved-for-eternity grade should probably be the letter grade. It would guarantee that any changes to grade scale wouldn't affect the students grade.
On the other hand, these guys are much better programmers than I, and may already have a way of storing the finalized grade that isn't affected by future changes.
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Adam Sentz @Shane - Populi allows for grade scales to change over time while preserving historic records. A scale carries forward until a new one replaces it and so on. So making a change in the future won't affect any historic grades.
Populi can also handle altering historic grade scales if need be.
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James Hi Brian and Shane,
We do track changes to your grade scales year by year - so Brian you'll want to make sure that the grade scale is correct in an old term and a new one... if it's not, we can change it on our end and everything should line up nicely.
Shane, when you made that change in 5 years, you could either let us know to make the change right then for that year, or go back in time and change everything retroactively.
Brian, the reason we run off of a number grade is that quite often we run into situations like the one you mentioned, where grade scales need to be adjusted retroactively. The deal is that if in term X your school's official policy was that an 87 was an A, but for some reason that term X in Populi had a gradescale where the cutoff for an A was 90, teachers would have recorded Bs for students in term X who should actually have got As. The nice thing about a number is that when we adjust the gradescale for that term, students' grades are automatically updated to what they should have been, based on the correct policy in place at the time.
Sorry... reading my own explanation I think I'm confused - does that make sense?
Thanks!
James -
Brian Dunbar Lol, James. Actually, I am still fuzzy on this. Help me understand why it's better to base the grade off a number than a letter. What is the benefit?
The benefit of basing it on the letter is that it allows for a multiplicity of numeric scales with no adverse affects on transcripts.
Sorry to be such a bother...I'm just having a hard time getting my mind around this.
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James @Brian - no worries, I just need more coffee! Having had another cup, I think one underlying issue is that many of our clients have some sort of official 1-100 gradescale - so school policy is: 93-100 = A = 4.0. So for starters, we'd have to add a setting to turn off custom gradescales - since those clients wouldn't like it if professors got to decide that A = 85-100. And I guess I'm confused what the benefit would be to the student of multiple numeric gradescales - it seems like having a school-wide 93-100 = A gradescale at any given point in time makes things simpler for everybody?
That said, I think we need to add more advanced features to our gradebook like curving and dropping low scores... it seems like that would address the underlying problem with a single gradescale, which is that faculty want the freedom to tinker with grades en masse?
The main benefit of storing a number is that grades automatically correct themselves when we need to modify historic information... for example, it happens pretty frequently that in the rush of a new year, the registrar forgets to notify us of a change in gradescale - and sometime the error isn't discovered until months later, when the term is over and finalized. In that case, a student who got an 89 might have been given a B for a course when he *should* have gotten an A, only the registrar didn't let us know that they were dropping the cutoff for an A down to 87 starting that term. So the professor graded all the assignments, Populi gave the student a B, and the professor finalized the course.
If that B were locked forever on the transcript, his GPA would suffer since he would be awarded X credits * 3.5 instead of the X credits * 4.0 he should have got - but since right now we look at the 89% when pulling the transcript, the grade will automatically be A => 4.0 as soon as the registrar lets us know there was a mistake and we correct that term's gradescale.
Well, that answer was longer... but does it make any more sense?
Thanks!
James
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Brian Dunbar Makes sense. I suspect our institution is probably different from most in that we do not have a grading scale mandated to us - each instructor is free to choose his/her own. Some even use different scales for different courses. For schools like ours, it would be nice to be able to select a scale for each course, with the letter grade applying to the GPA instead of the percentile.
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James Hi Brian,
Yes, I can see how (especially without more advanced gradebook functionality) professors would want that. To be honest, I don't see us changing the way we store grades anytime soon, but I do genuinely appreciate your time discussing it - for one thing, I think we have a lot better picture now of why people would want to do things this way.
And we definitely plan on upgrading the gradebook to handle curving and dropping low scores, which with any luck will help folks a lot.
Thanks again!
James
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Lois Solberg Hi, I just added a course just to track student attendance at our noon meetings, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday each week. BUT because I didn’t want it to affect a student's overall attendance, I entered it as a weekly assignment with four points per week earned (one point per session attended).
But now I’m thinking this is wrong because it will affect a student’s GPA. OY!
The reason I entered this discussion is because I’d like to just adjust the grading system to reflect 4=A, 3=B, 2=C, 1=D and 0=F
But I’d rather not show a grade at all, just the number of points. Is that something our registrar should handle as P/F?
Or is there an entirely different route to handle this?
Thanks for your input – kind regards, lois
Lois Link Solberg
Student Tracking Specialist
Title III Program, Alaska Christian College
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Kerry Pretty We would like to have 2 different pass/fail grading scales for practicums, the usual A, B, C ... grading scale for courses in most of our programs, and a competancy grading scale for new competancy based programs. This woud seem to fit into this feature request. We could implement this on a course or course instance basis in the same fashion as Delivery Method, Campus, Program or Department where there is also a Default setting for one grading scale.
Any chance of this being implemented for Fall 2024?
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Adam Sentz Kerry Pretty - This request is for by-course grade scales. We still aren't planning to implement those. You can already have different grade scales by program. So I'm not sure exactly what you're requesting here. If it's something other than by-course grade scales it might be best to start a new feature request.
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Kerry Pretty I am sorry I used the "by program" monicker. I should have said "by degree", which we typically refer to as program at our school. Apologies. Some of our degrees are moving to competancy based rather than the traditional grading scale. Also, practicums are tracked as courses. Would this then fit into this request?
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Adam Sentz Kerry Pretty - If those can be organized under different programs then they can have different grade scales. We don't have any plans to implement by-course grade scales as requested here.
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