This is yet another guest post by our chat agent – Anna

This article is an elaboration/addition to our previously discussed “Weighted Grades and Gradebook Formulas”. You can read it here:

http://blog.quickschools.com/2013/10/01/weighted-grades-and-gradebook-formulas/

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As awesome as automatically generated weighted final grades are in the Gradebook, there are many different features available with formulas, depending on how you would like to use it. Here are some other ideas for using formulas for weighted averages:

Extra Credit

Want extra credit to be, say, a flat 10% of a student’s grade? To do this, add an extra weight factor for the category “extra credit” and set its weight percent at 10%. Of course, you can set extra credit to be any percent of the final grade that you choose.For example in the screenshot below, Stewart’s final grade is a 100%.  

In order to count extra credit, we use a formula like the one below that includes extra credit as 10% of the final grade.Read More »

This is a guest post by 2 of our awesome live chat agents: Anna and Rick

Many of our schools – and their teachers – prefer to use weighted grades when calculating final grades for a semester or for a course. If you are considering using weighted grades, or wondering how to get your grading all setup, here’s some info on how it all works.

Weighted Grades

Weighted grading is a grading system where certain types of assignments/assessments are prioritized more than others in the final grade. Often, the idea behind this sort of grading is smaller assignments are designed to be more like practice. Tests and exams are designed to allow students to show what they have learned. Therefore, these big grades ought to count for more in the final grade than practice grades should.

For many classes, weighted grades work in grading systems that rely on using graded assignments for feedback and calculating a student’s final grade. This final grade is a weighted average. This sort of average is designed to make the final grade closest to the average of the type of assignment that is the most heavily weighted.

Here’s an example of how weighted averages might be used. Say you are a History teacher, and you give 3 big tests per term. A dozen quizzes, homework every day, and a daily participation grade. However, you want these three big tests to be the biggest portion of a student’s grade because they require a student to demonstrate their best writing and all of their knowledge to date. You might decide that for the grading system in your class, tests will be 50%, quizzes will be 25%, homework will be 20%, and participation will be 5%.

As a result in this class, tests have by far the largest impact on a student’s final grade. Quizzes have half of that impact, homework has a little less, and participation has even less of an impact.  At the end of term, the way students’ final averages would be calculated following a formula that looks a lot like this :

Final Grade = (sum of tests’ averages) * 0.5 + (sum of quizzes’ averages)*0.25 + (sum of homeworks’ averages) * 0.20 + (sum of participation averages) * 0.05

Looks like a lot of time with a calculator, right? Well, that’s where our Gradebook enters the game.

Setting Up Formulas in Gradebook

A great feature about the Gradebook is that does all of these calculations for you. Teachers enter a student’s grades and set up a quick formula, and the final grade is calculated automatically. The formula appears in the teacher’s gradebook, the report card if its a final grade, and if students and parents are allowed to see gradebooks, in their gradebooks in their student and parent portals.. And, when administrators go to draw up report cards, these final grade calculations automatically load into Report Cards.

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