Do you use a total point system or weighted grades for organizing student performance and progress? If you use a total point system, do you know what percentage of their work comes from tests, discussion boards, quizzes, papers, assignments, homework? Do you think it is important to weigh certain work more heavily than other work? Is a quiz worth the same weight in your eyes as a homework worksheet? If you haven’t considered how you organize your grade book, let’s take a closer look at two methods; total points and weighted grades.
Using this example, this course has a total of 250 points.
The percentage of the student’s grade is summarized in the second column. Is that the amount of weight this instructor wanted to assign to each of those three categories? If it is, this method works perfectly.
However, if an instructor finds that he/she wants to assign the percentages listed in column three of this slide to those categories, there is a problem. If that is the case, the instructor can set up a weighted grade system in Blackboard. Categories can be set up; Assignments, Tests, Quizzes, etc. and each document added to each of the three categories would total to the percentage that is assigned to that category.
All of the quizzes, for example, would now comprise 30% of the student’s TOTAL grade. It wouldn’t matter how many quizzes were given, or the point value for each quiz. The total amount of quizzes would make up only 30%. The same is true for any other categories you create. This method eliminates the ‘worry’ about making a test worth a certain amount of points or assigning too many points to a research paper because it would throw off the weight of its value.
Perhaps you haven’t even thought about how your total points are divided in the student’s final grade. Now is a good time to evaluate your system. Take a look at the tutorial provided from Blackboard to set up your Grade Center with the weighted grade system.
