Gradebook and Assignment Types

KNOWLEDGE BASE -> Gradebook and Assignment Types

In the December 21, 2017 release we changed the way College Office computes the final grade of a student in a class.

Formerly, the final average of a student in a class was computed by averaging the assignment grades of the student in the class, taking into account the weight of each assignment as defined by the instructor.

In the new way of computing the final average, each assignment is assigned an Assignment Type (for example Test or Homework, but you can also define more types as needed, check the Assignment Types help topic) and for each Assignment Type College Office computes the Assignment Type Average which is the average of all assignments of the same type taking into account the specific weight of each assignment as defined by the instructor. Then College Office computes the final average as the average of the Assignment Type Averages, taking into account the weight of each assignment type.

Example

A class has 5 assignments:

Book Report, Type = Homework, Weight = 2
Short Paper, Type = Homework, Weight = 1
Research Paper, Type = Homework, Weight = 3
Mid Term, Type = Test, Weight = 1
Final Exam, Type = Test, Weight = 2

In that class, the Homework type has a weight of 5 and the Test type a weight of 7

Student Joe Smith got the following grades:

Book Report: 90
Short Paper: 75
Research Paper: 85
Mid Term: 89
Final Exam: 95

College Office first computes Joe’s average for each assignment type, taking into account the relative weight of each assignment within the type:

Joe’s Homework Average: (2x90 + 1x75 + 3x85)/(2+1+3) = 85
Joe’s Test Average: (1x89 + 2x95)/(1+2) = 93

Then College Office computes the final average as the average of the Assignment Type averages, taking into account the weight of each type:

Joe’s final average: (5x85 + 7x93)/(5 + 7) = 89.67

College Office comes with 2 assignment types by default: Homework and Test, but you can add more types or disable any type you do not wish to use. Go to Assignment Types (from Setup and then Grading...), and assign to each type the default values you would like this type to have for all classes of your institution. These values can be overridden for specific courses (sees the Course View Form)) and they can always be overridden at the class level (see the Assignments page of the Class View Form,and from there the Class Assignment Type View Form and the Class Assignment Type Edit Form)
The values of an Assignment Type are:

Weight: the weight of this assignment type when computing the student final average
Min Average: the minimum average the student must have within this type to pass the class. Though a student may have a passing final average, he/she may still fail the class if he/she has an average below this minimum within this type.
Low Grades Ignored: the number of lowest grades ignored when computing the student average in this type.