2017 Gradebook Grading Schema Charts & Statistics

This enhancement is intended to assist faculty final grading workflow by providing the options, data and workflow they need. See Github for details.

A. Use Case 

Departments and Colleges within institutions often have, as a measure against grade inflation and of course difficulty, a requirement that the course average GPA be at a certain level. This page is just one example found on the internet. Faculty in such a department or institution who use the Sakai Gradebook for all their grade calculations will want to give students point or percentage feedback but withhold letter grades and/or grade points until they establish the final curve at the end of the term. 

1. Student George takes Intro to Psych, all course grades (points or % equivalents) available to him are tallied by Sakai. He's earned 980 points of the 1000 points available in this course. His Instructor though, set up the gradebook so that his scores were recorded, not in points, but in %'s, and in 3 categories named Homework, Papers and Exams which are weighted differently. Either way, Sakai has calculated and displays his final course grade at 98%.
   Sakai also knows that George is one of 25 students in his class. But Sakai doesn't know how many credits this course is worth. The Instructor would need to use the course credits as part of the calculation if they were interested in learning individual students' GPAs, but in a course average GPA, course credit is not used in the calculation.
   The Instructor is able to a) define the course grade display for students as %; b) re-adjust the grade distribution according to point values using the Grade schema.
   The course grade point calculation translates the % each student earned into the grade point equivalent in the scale the Instructor has altered, such as moving A-(3.67) from 96-97% to 96-98% (poor George, he just went from 4.0 to 3.67 grade points!) ... Sakai would add each students grade points, divide by the number of students in the Sakai site (assuming them all to be duly registered for the class) and thereby calculate the course's average in grade points (although not quality points), recalculating every time the instructor moved the % equivalent scale.
2. The Instructor is able to control, reset and continue to reset their Grading Schema/Scale at any time during the time their course is live. 

B. Course Average GPA Calculation

This calculation is different from that of a student's gpa and is distinguished from in in ND's data dictionary under the term "Course Average GPA." The method for calculating a student's gpa involves a quality point 4 point scale based upon their earned work, which is then multiplied by the credit hours (or difficulty) of the class per the semester, term or quarter for that class, to arrive at the GPA for that class. All the class GPA's summed and then divided by the total term credits the student has attempted will give you the student's total GPA for the term. However, for our purposes, we only want to know how many quality points are being issued to students in this course, what their average is, and what their distribution will be if percentages are assigned as indicated. The data dictionary definition is, "The average of the grade quality points for all students registered for a specific course unweighted by credit hours."

C. Associated Statistics

(Those in red are calculated in the unit which the Instructor has chosen to display in their scale, either (grade points or letters). "N/A" or Not Applicable displays when P/F.

1. Course Average GPA (ie. 3.67)
2. Median Grade (ie. 3.689)
3. Lowest Grade (ie .98)
4. Highest Grade (ie 4.0)
5. Total graded students (ie 200)

D. Resources and Definitions

1. "Course Average GPA*" : The average of the grade quality points for all students registered for a specific course unweighted by credit hours. *This term and definition were taken from the University of Notre Dame Data Dictionary.
2. "Total students" : The count of the # of unique students in the Sakai site assuming them to be duly registered/enrolled in the class. Auditors are not included.

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