Grades

You will be evaluated on your demonstrated knowledge of content and practice in assignments, your ability to interact with assigned text and materials, and your class participation. Formal written assignments are to be free from grammatical and spelling errors, to be well-constructed, and to demonstrate richness of thought as well as complex understanding of the topic(s) under study.

If you feel you are in jeopardy of falling below a C, please arrange to meet with the instructor.

Preferred Grading Scale

Outstanding Work (90-110%)

Goes above and beyond the requirements of the assignment, above and beyond merely competent work. Outstanding effort, significant achievement, and mastery of the material of the course are clearly evident in comparison with other students in the course who have the same assignment, same resources, and same time constraints. Exceptional critical skills, creativity or originality is also evident. Consistently developed ideas.

Above Average (80-89%)

Fulfills all aspects of the assignment and goes a bit beyond minimum competence to demonstrate a thorough and above average understanding of course material in comparison with other students in the course. Extra effort, extra achievement or extra improvement often evident. Clearly demonstrated concepts and ideas.

Average (70-79%)

Fulfills all aspects of the assignment with obvious competence and grace in comparison with other students in the course. A thorough and satisfactory understanding of basic course material. If you do the assignment exactly as it is assigned, you will receive an average grade; in other words, you will receive a C.

Below Average (60-69%)

Demonstrates marginally satisfactory understanding of basic course material. May indicate failure to follow directions, implement specific recommendations, or demonstrate personal effort and improvement. May demonstrate only surface grasp or application of course concepts. Some aspect of the assignment has not been fulfilled, or a preponderance of errors (more than one or two per page) interferes with clear communication.

Below 60%

Lack of demonstration of satisfactory understanding of basic course material. Failure to grasp or apply course concepts. Not acceptable, either because the student did not complete the assignment as directed, or because the level of writing skill is below an acceptable level for college work. If the assignment is completed at the F level, then an “F” (60%) will be assigned. If a student earned below 60%, then that percent will be given. If the assignment is not turned in, then a zero will be given.

Atypical Grades That Can Be Earned in Class

Please note at the end: there are two 2 atypical grades that I also assign. On transcripts, a final grade that indicates that you fall in the “R” or “0” range would be an F.

Redo (weighs as 20%)

Usually this is given because the student has misunderstood the assignment, or because some particularly egregious error prevents the assignment from achieving its purpose. In the case of a good faith effort to excel but running into significant difficulties with the assignment, the student has the responsibility and right to redo the assignment. If the student has failed to do a paper correctly despite opportunities for feedback and repeated instruction on a paper, or in cases of severe plagiarism, the R cannot be immediately remediated, but the student is still expected to correct the errors in the next draft. In cases where corrections can be made, if the student receives a grade of R, you have 48 hours to contact the professor for a phone or face-to-face appointment. In the appointment, we will discuss what went wrong with the assignment and contract a way and a time to redo the assignment. If you fail to turn in a revision according to the individual contract, you will keep the R grade on the assignment. Students have 1 week to redo the assignment correctly for a higher grade. Students who miss both the 48 hour deadline to contact the professor and the 1 week re-do extension keep the R.

The “Re-Write Cycle: Students may be asked to re-do an assignment multiple times; each redo request will re-start the 1 week re-do deadline. Papers in the Re-Write Cycle are considered “on time” as long as weekly meetings are held. This is a normal part of papers 2 and 3, and 80% of students end up re-writing at least one draft. An R is only given if the student fails to submit the final draft.

Zero

A zero is given is a student has submitted nothing for an assignment. Once a zero has been assigned, students have one week to turn in the missing assignment for 90% credit. After 1 week, the zero is permanent.

I reserve the right to give a grade of 0 or F or to require a proctored rewrite if I feel a paper: appears to be the product of too much outside help; does not reflect your abilities; or conveys a voice and style that do not match the voice and style used in discussions, drafts, emails and other writing done in class.

Alternate Grading Scale

★

✔+

✔

✔-

100% to 99.9%

< 99.9% to 95%

< 95% to 85%

< 85% to 70%

< 70% to 20%

< 20% to 0%

Credit/No Credit

This grading scale is used for occasional assignments. Typically, the assignment is either for full credit or no credit. Late submissions can still lose a percentage.

Students can earn one of two marks

✔

70 to 100%

Assignment was completed.

0-69%

Assignment was not completed.

Passing

What time and effort you put into the class will directly impact what you get out of it.

There will be both graded and ungraded assignments. Many of the ungraded assignments are measured by how you construct your own knowledge in order to implement the skills in your papers. The measurement comes later.

Additionally, the units are ordered to develop skills that build upon prior knowledge. So skipping too many things in the middle leads to problems in the end.

For the online class, units are designed to open after key assignments have been completed. You can work as quickly as you want, but slowly has that end of the semester deadline. The synchronous sessions and weekly reminders will happen on a set weekly schedule that is the minimum of how quickly you need to move through the class. The live class moves at the pace of the course calendar. Falling more than a week behind makes it difficult to catch up.

Ultimately, the course is looking at Paper 4 to measure student learning. Papers 1-3 and the whole rest of the course is designed so every student could ace Paper 4. Students have walked into this class with zero knowledge (of the technology and/or writing skills) then walked out with an A. How? The course is designed so that if you do all the work, your skills grow so you walk away with at least a B. The professor is extremely accessible and patient with answering student questions and helping students with the technology. Doing all the work, you will develop the skills to ace the class, and a flawless paper 4 (demonstrating mastery of all SLOs) will push a B over the edge to an A.

That being said, students who fail to pass the research paper (demonstrating good effort and no plagiarism) will not pass the class, regardless of their grade average.

The modules on Canvas are set up so students can complete the papers independent of the coursework. Sometimes students think they can focus only on the papers. Things will start going horribly wrong by paper 3 if students haven’t developed the skills to write the paper, and all skills up to the point of final submission are expected to be demonstrated in each paper.

Occasionally, students think they can write the papers in one draft. Don’t. Just don’t. A first draft is typically full of predictable errors that are obvious to the professor. You have all the resources you need to write/revise a flawless draft before the professor sees it. Use them.

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