How to Weight the Final Course Grade

1. How to Weight the Final Course Grade Important: Weighting the final course grade can be done by assigning the total point value of all assignments to

be equal to their weight in the total grade, so that the sum of points of all assignments is 100.

Refer to the tips sheet Assignment Groups, Weighted Grading, and Grade Rules tip sheet for a more advanced setup.

Open the course. In Course Navigation, click the "Assignments" link.

Figure 1 Assignments Link

The default Assignment Group in every course is called "Assignments".

Click the More Options button and select Edit to rename the group (if needed).

Figure 2 Edit Assignment Group

Enter the new name in the "Group Name" field.

Click "Save".

2How to Weight the Final Course Grade

Figure 3 Edit Assignment Group Name

If you have not created assignments yet, click on the "+Assignment" button to create a new assignment.

Enter the assignment details.

In this example, the Essay assignment is worth 25% of the total grade, so it is assigned 25 points.

Select "Percentage" in the "Display Grade as" drop down. This will allow you to enter the grade as a Percentage in the SpeedGrader.

Click "Save" to save your assignment or "Save & Publish" if you want to publish the assignment.

Figure 4 Assignment Details

3How to Weight the Final Course Grade

Repeat the steps above until all the assignments have been added to the assignment group.

In this example, - Essay is worth 25% of the grade (25 points)- Paper Outline is worth 5% of the grade (5 points)- Midterm is worth 20% of the grade (20 points)- Participation is worth 10% of the grade (10 points)- Final Exam is worth 40% of the grade (40 points)

The sum of all points in the "Grading Scheme" group is 100.

Note: The Participation and Paper Outline assignments are set to Display Grade as Score instead of Percentage.

Figure 5 Assignments in the Grading Scheme Group

Once the assignment grades are ready, manually convert the scores to percentages and add them to the Gradebook.

For example, if student receives 84% in the Essay, enter "84%".

Figure 6 Essay Grade

4How to Weight the Final Course Grade

Given a student with the following grades.- Essay: 84% (21/25 points)- Paper Outline : 4/5- Midterm: 90% (18/20)- Participation: 6/10- Final Exam: 75% (30/40)

The final grade for this student is 79% (0.84x0.25 + 0.8x0.05 + 0.1x0.6 + 0.9x0.2+0.75x0.4 = 79%).

Figure 7 Total Score

Note: The Total column does not consider ungraded assignments. For example, if the Final Exam score is not entered yet, the Total will be 81.67%0.84x0.25 + 0.8x0.05 + 0.9x0.2 + 0.1x0.6 = 49.49/60 = 81.67%

Figure 8 Total Score with Ungraded Assignment

To view the Total score while considering ungraded assignments as '0', toggle the grade book to individual view.

” Figure 9 Toggle Gradebook to individual view

From the Gradebook: Individual View, select "Treat Ungraded as 0".

5How to Weight the Final Course Grade

Figure 10 Treat Ungraded as 0

The Total score will be 49%.0.84x0.25 + 0.8x0.05 + 0.9x0.2 + 0.1x0.6 = 49.49/100 = 49%

Enabling this option has no effect outside of the Gradebook; students will not see any difference in their grade pages since totals are not shown to them. Similarly, TAs or other instructors in the course will not see any change in their view of the Gradebook. Only the user who enables this option will see the affected grades.

When the Treat Ungraded as 0 setting is enabled, assignments that do not have a grade will be treated as if a student received a score of zero. You can disable this setting in the Gradebook at any time. Even when this setting is enabled, Quercus will not populate zeros in the Gradebook. Dashes will still display for eachstudent submission.