In Oncourse CL, how do changes in the Gradebook tool affect data for previous semesters?

Effective December 28, 2008, the Gradebook tool stores letter grades and percentage grades differently.

From spring semester 2009 on, you can enter letter grades as non-calculating gradebook items, which are stored as text rather than numerically. Percentage grades are stored as percentage values. For more, see How changes in the Gradebook tool affect grade entry for current and future semesters.

The change affects data for semesters prior to December 2008 as follows:

• Letter grades: Every letter grade in past gradebook(s) was stored in the Oncourse CL database as a numeric value and used to perform course grade calculations. During the upgrade, the numeric data associated with each gradebook item was converted to plain text letter grades (A, B, C, etc.), and the course grade calculation as well as the relative weight assigned to each item disappeared from the Gradebook tool.
  
  
• Percentage grades: Every percentage grade in past gradebooks was stored in the Oncourse CL database as a point value, with the relative weight as the number of possible points. For instance, if the relative weight for the assignment was 5, and a student received a 90%, the score in the database for that student was 4.5 (90% of 5). After the upgrade, the score for such a student would be 90% (.9).

  During the upgrade, the data associated with each gradebook item was permanently converted from points to percentage values. This conversion should produce no noticeable difference in the item scores, Gradebook Item Relative Weight values, course grades, or class averages that are displayed in the gradebook.

Before your gradebook data was converted from point values to text or percentage values, all existing data was exported, and a copy of the export file has been placed in your personal Resources tool in My Workspace. The name of the file is in the general form siteid-gradebook-uuid.csv (e.g., FA06-IN-UITS-1234-gradebook-bbdfae39-1dcd-46d1-9c05-2a4043fae066.csv). In addition, UITS will retain a copy in case you accidentally lose or delete your copy.

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