ARCHIVED: In Oncourse CL, how do changes in the Gradebook tool affect grade entry for current and future semesters?
Effective December 28, 2008, the Gradebook tool stores letter grades and percentage grades differently. Gradebooks using points are unaffected by the change.
See below for the new functionality for your gradebook type:
Letter-grade/non-calculating gradebooks
Starting spring semester 2009, letter-grade gradebooks are non-calculating in the Gradebook tool. A grade in a non-calculating gradebook is stored as text, and may be any string of up to eight characters. Note the following consequences of this change:
- Since letter-grade gradebooks are non-calculating, relative item
weights and weighted categories are no longer supported.
- The Gradebook Items screen no longer displays the class average
for each item.
- The All Grades and Course Grades screens no longer display
individual and class average course grades.
- Items in the Assignments and Original Test and Survey tools can no
longer be linked to items in non-calculating gradebooks. You need to
manually enter the grades from these items in the Gradebook tool.
- You can still link a Forum topic to a non-calculating gradebook item, which allows you to assign true letter grades to student posts.
To have your course grades automatically calculated, you need to
change the grade entry type to either points or percentages. To do
so, from within the Gradebook tool, click Gradebook Setup,
and under "Grade Entry", select either Points or
Percentages.
Warning: Once grades have been entered, you must delete all grades in order to change the grade entry or grade type. If you attempt to change either after you enter grades, you will be prompted to export your gradebook or delete grades before you can change the gradebook setup.
Percentage gradebooks
For fall 2008 and earlier semesters, percentage grades were 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).
Following the upgrade, Oncourse provides native support for percentage scores. A score of 90% is stored in the database as 90% (or .9) regardless of the relative weight assigned to the item. See below for details:
-
Gradebook Item Relative Weight: This value now
serves as a true relative weight, establishing proportional
relationships among items in the category. If one item has a relative
weight of 1, and another has a relative weight of 2, the second counts
twice as much as the first. You can set the relative weight to any
value. It is no longer tied to the maximum number of points
associated with a Forums, Assignments, or Original Test and Survey item.
-
Assignments: For percentage gradebooks, UITS
recommends linking an assignment to an existing gradebook item; with
this method, you can set the gradebook item relative weight to any
value. If you are adding a gradebook item from the Assignments tool,
set "Grade Scale" to
Points or Percent, and set maximum points to 100. In this case, the relative item weight will be set to 1; you cannot change the relative weight when adding the item from the Assignments tool.
-
Forums: When you link a forum topic to a
gradebook item, you can set the gradebook item relative weight to any
value, and then grade the item on a percent scale from 0 to 100.
- Original Test and Survey: When you link an assessment to a gradebook item, you can set the gradebook item relative weight to any value. The Original Test and Survey tool will send a percent value to the gradebook.
Last modified on January 04, 2010.
