IT Support - Grading & Participation

Program Grading

Your objective in this program is to master all the competencies successfully. To do so, you need to score 80% or higher on your final assignment for each competency, which may include skill-based quizzes or practical exercises. Be assured that we are here to support you every step of the way.

All students will begin with a pre-assessment, which will help establish a personalized learning path. Throughout the program, you will participate in meaningful discussions and milestone activities designed to sharpen your skills and prepare you for success.

The key to success is to demonstrate mastery. By achieving a score of 80% or higher on the final assessment for each competency, you will unlock a variety of new opportunities:

Earn a Certificate of Completion, showcasing your expertise.
Receive an optional Digital Badge in Durable Skills in Metacognition, highlighting your critical thinking abilities.

Your dedication and hard work will ensure your success. Check out the various ways below to keep track of your grades and see how you're progressing. Let's dive in!

Badges

When you have skill, we want you to be able to show it to the world. That's why our program offers digital badges for skill mastery that can easily be shared online. The badges are not just a nice image, but offer a description of the skills you have mastered. For each competency, you can earn a badge. Once you have all competencies completed, you will receive a course badge. And once you have completed all material in the program, you will receive a program badge.

Example of a badge

Example image of a Cybersecurity badge that shows details like earning criteria and skill tags associated

Types of assessments

There are three forms of assessments in your program:

Pre-assessment - ungraded, to determine your current knowledge and skills.
Formative assessment - ungraded, to let you practice with the material during a module, often short quizzes or exercises.
Summative (final) assessment - graded, at the end of a module for you to show off your newly acquired, updated or refreshed knowledge and skills.

Mastery Pathways

Our program uses Mastery Pathways. The simple explanation of this is: if you have already mastered a certain skill, you don't have to go through all the lessons.

A competency consists of content and assessments. If you pass the pre-assessment (80% or higher score), you unlock the summative assessments without the necessity to go through all the content. If you don't pass the pre-assessment (low than 80% score), you follow the full path of going through all the content before unlocking the summative assessments.

This model means that students who join the program with some of the skills can focus on the content of the skills they still need to develop.

A women working on a computer from the couch

Using a rubric

Graded activities that require you to write out an answer in a text box are accompanied by a rubric. A rubric is a tool used by your instructor to grade your responses in activities. You can view and use this rubric during the activity as a tool to craft your response. It gives a detailed overview of what the expectations are of a student who has a solid understanding of or masters a topic. You can see an example rubric below.

The rubric contains skills that are graded by the instructor, for example, "Demonstrate clear, logical, and substantially error-free writing". This skill is then graded on one of the four levels, ranging from "Limited understanding" to "Mastery". In the rubric you can see at each skill and level cross-section what the expectation is that leads to a certain grade. To complete an assessment, you will have to score at least a 3 or "solid understanding" on each of the skills.

Sample Rubric

Example Rubric

Withdrawal & Administrative drop

To withdraw from the program, simply complete a withdrawal form with assistance from the Academic Success Counselor.

The last day to drop without a “W” on your record is the end of the 4th week from your term start date.
The last day to withdraw with a “W” is the end of the 14th week (98 days) from your term start date.
Appeals for an Excused Withdrawal (EW) due to extenuating circumstances are available from Week 15 through the end of the term.

If you receive a "W," you'll need to re-enroll. Units or completed learning sets from your previous enrollment will carry over as a starting point for your new enrollment in the course.

Academic progress marks of Pass (P), No Pass (NP), or Satisfactory Progress (SP) are assigned beginning Week 15 (after 98 days) through the end of the term.