Recording Calculating Grades
Before You Begin
Before setting up your gradebook, you should determine:
- How grades will be calculated in the course
- How much of the final grade each assignment or exam is worth
Grading policies are generally determined by the senior professor and communicated in the course syllabus. Final grades may be calculated based on total points, the weighted average of percentage grades, or the weighted average of letter grades.
In the points system, for example, Assignment 1 might be worth 100 points, Assignment 2 worth 300 points, Assignment 3 worth 200 points, Exam 1 worth 200 points, and Exam 2 worth 200 points. The final grade would then be calculated by adding up the total points earned on each course requirement. In the percentage and letter-grade systems, each grade is worth a certain percentage of the final course grade. Here, Assignment 1 would be worth 10%, Assignment 2 worth 30%, Assignment 3 worth 20%, Exam 1 worth 20%, and Exam 2 worth 20% of the final grade (note that the percentages should always add up to 100%).
If you are using letter grades, make sure that you determine a point value for each letter grade (e.g., A = 12, A- = 11, B+ = 10, B = 9, B- = 8, C+ = 7, C = 6, C- = 5, D+ = 4, D = 3, D- = 2, F = 1), so that you will have a numerical basis for calculating final grades.
The calculation method chosen is less important than being consistent with your calculations. Avoid assigning points for some assignments and percentage or letter grades for others. Mixing and matching will confuse students and complicate things when it comes time to calculate final grades. It is also important to make sure that the grading system is clear to students at the beginning of the semester. Knowing how grades are calculated, and how much each assignment is worth, creates transparency and gives students a better sense of their standing in the course at any given point in the semester.
Keeping a Record
If you are keeping paper records, wait about two weeks (or until the add/drop deadline passes and your course roster stabilizes) to create your permanent gradebook. For the first two weeks, keep track of absences and early grades on the initial roster provided by your department, a temporary notebook, or attendance sheets passed around in class. If you are keeping electronic records, you can use Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet program to create a gradesheet before the first day of class. You do not need to wait two week, as these programs allow you to add or delete student names from your gradesheet as the roster stabilizes.
Setting up the Gradebook
List students alphabetically by last name in the first column. This ordering will save you time and prevent errors when you submit final grades. List all of the graded course requirements at the top of the remaining columns.
You can list these items in the order they occur in the class, or group them by type (i.e., all lab reports together, all papers together, all exams together, etc.).
Protecting the Gradebook
Your gradebook, whether paper or electronic, is one of the most important course documents you will you working with, and should be treated as such. Keep paper gradebooks in a secure location. If you are using an electronic spreadsheet to keep track of grades, password protect the file. Taking these precautions protects both you and your students.
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It is also a good idea to make copies every few weeks. That way, if something ends up happening to your original gradebook, you won't have lost everything. And, as anyone who has ever experienced a computer crash can attest, electronic gradebooks are particularly vulnerable. Back up your files regularly, and print hard copies at the same interval you would photocopy a paper gradebook. Think of the time and effort put into protecting your records as insurance against the nightmare scenario of leaving your gradebook in a coffee shop (or having it eaten by your harddrive).
Calculating Final Grades
Double-Check Your Grades
Before you begin calculating your final grades, you should double-check the accuracy of your gradesheet. In other words, make sure that the grades in your gradebook match up with the grades that you actually gave your students.
For papers and other written assignments, which are generally graded and then returned to the student, you may want to photocopy the page containing your summative comments and the grade. If you let students take graded quizzes and exams home, you can make a copy of the graded page for your course files.
A caveat: For large courses, or course with a large number of assignments and grades, it may be unrealistic to make or keep copies of all graded material. If this is the case, you may want to be more selective in the items you opt to photocopy.
Calculating a Weighted Average
If you are using a points system in your course, then you will use simple arithmetic to calculate the total number of points earned. The grading scale for the course (generally located on the syllabus) will help you to convert total points into a letter grade. For example, in a course with a possible 500 total points, students will need a certain number of those 500 points to earn an A, a B, a C, etc. You do not need to worry about how much of the final grade each assignment or exam is worth in the point system, because their worth has already been determined by the maximum points allotted.
If you are using percentages or letter grades instead, calculating the final grade is a bit more complicated. You will need to "weight" each assignment or exam according to how much of the final grade it is worth. Using our earlier example, say that Assignment 1 is worth 10%, Assignment 2 worth 30%, Assignment 3 worth 20%, Exam 1 worth 20%, and Exam 2 worth 20% of the final grade (remember: the percentages should always add up to 100%). Then the final grade would be determined by the following "weighted average" formula:
(Assignment1Grade x .10) + (Assignment2Grade x .30) + (Assignment3Grade x .20) + (Exam1Grade x .20) + (Exam2Grade x .20) = Final Course Grade
Here is the same formula, with sample grades plugged in:
Percentages
(81 x .10) + (89 x .30) + (83 x .20) + (79 x .20) + (90 x .20) = 85.2 (B)
Letter-grades, converted to numeric values
(B- x .10) + (B+ x .30) + (B x .20) + (C+ x .20) + (A- x .20)
(8 x .10) + (10 x .30) + (9 x .20) + (7 x .20) + (11 x .20) = 9.2 (B)
If you have multiple graded items within a particular category (e.g, your students took 10 quizzes over the course of the semester and quizzes are worth 25% of the final grade), then you should first calculate the average score of this category, then plug that score into the final grade formula.
Calculating Final Grades in Excel
The formula function in Microsoft Excel and other spreadsheet programs can also be used to calculate final grades. If you are using the point system, you will instruct Excel to add up the total sum of the point values in each row. If you are are using percentages or letter-grades, you will provide Excel with a variation of the weighted average formula.
For the sake of illustration, suppose that you have 5 graded assignments and exams in your course. In the Excel spreadsheet, student names are listed in Column A, the grades for Assignment 1 are listed in Column B, the grades for Assignment 2 are listed in Column C, the grades for Assignment 3 are listed in Column D, the grades for Exam 1 are listed in Column E, and the grades for Exam 2 are listed in Column F. We will start with the first student, Jane Doe, whose grades are recorded in Row 2.
If we want to calculate Jane's final grade, we should select the right-most cell in her row (the space you left open for the final grade), and type the following formula into it:
=(B2*.10)+(C2*.30)+(D2*.20)+(E2*.20)+(F2*.20)
Excel will calculate the weighted average, and the final grade will appear in that cell. Excel will also let you cut and paste this formula into the other students' final grade cells. Just select the final grade you have just calculated, press ctrl + C (or apple key + C), select the cell below, and press ctrl + V (or apply key + V). The formula will be pasted into the cell and adjusted for that row. If you displayed the formula, it would read:
=(B3*.10)+(C3*.30)+(D3*.20)+(E3*.20)+(F3*.20)
You can also input the formula manually into each cell. Just remember to change the number to reflect the row you are calculating (B4, C4, D4, E4, and F4 for Row 4).
Your final result should look something like this:
