In Oncourse CL Gradebook, how were grades calculated when the letter grades entry type was used?
Note: As of December 2008, letter grades in Gradebook are non-calculating grades. If you want your grades calculated automatically, you must enter them either as points or percentages. See Changing the grade entry, type, and scale in Gradebook, How changes in the Gradebook tool affect data for previous semesters, and How changes in the Gradebook tool affect grade entry for current and future semesters.
Before December 2008, if you entered grades as letter grades (as opposed to point or percentage values), the Gradebook tool converted those letter grades to numerical values according to the default values in the following table:
| Grade | % |
|---|---|
| A+ | 100.0 |
| A | 95.0 |
| A- | 90.0 |
| B+ | 87.0 |
| B | 83.0 |
| B- | 80.0 |
| C+ | 77.0 |
| C | 73.0 |
| C- | 70.0 |
| D+ | 67.0 |
| D | 63.0 |
| D- | 60.0 |
| F | 0.0 |
In the Gradebook tool, if you chose to enter grades as points or percentage values, you could set the minimum percentages for each
letter grade by editing the table in Course Grade
Options. See Changing the grade entry, type, and scale in Gradebook.
These settings only affected the calculation of the
final course grade; they did not affect the conversion of grades for items
entered as letter grades. To prevent confusion on this point, if you were entering your grades as letter grades, Oncourse CL would not allow you to change the grade scale. If you were entering your grades as points or percentages, the course letter grade for each student would be determined according to
the settings in this table and would reflect any changes you made.
The following examples demonstrate how these default percentages affected students' grades.
Suppose a student received the following grades. Gradebook would perform the following calculations:
| Item value | Grade | Percentage | Value stored by Oncourse CL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Item 1 | 100 | C+ | 77 | 77 (.77*100) |
| Item 2 | 50 | B | 83 | 41.5 (.83*50) |
| Item 3 | 20 | A- | 90 | 18 (.90*20) |
| Item 4 | 60 | B+ | 87 | 52.2 (.87*60) |
| Total points earned: | 188.7 |
|---|---|
| Grade: | B- (188.7/230 = 82) |
Now imagine a student had a bad day on a 50 point test and failed it with a score of 25. If that score was entered as a letter grade, the student would receive a 0 for the test. Let's say the student improved and received the following grades:
| Item value | Grade | Percentage | Value stored by Oncourse CL | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Item 1 | 50 | F | 0 | 0 (0*50) |
| Item 2 | 60 | B | 83 | 49.8 (.83*60) |
| Item 3 | 50 | A- | 90 | 45 (.90*50) |
| Item 4 | 20 | C+ | 77 | 15.4 (.77*20) |
| Total points earned: | 110.2 |
|---|---|
| Grade: | D- (110.2/180 = 61) |
In cases in which a student earned a grade of F, the use of the lower bound of the grade scale was exaggerated and could result in lower grades than if a point scale was used. If the student had received a point score (25) for the failed exam, the grade would have been different.
| Total points earned: | 135.2 |
|---|---|
| Grade: | C (135.2/180 = 75) |
Also see:
Last modified on December 28, 2008.
