Grading Policies
Grading Questions
If you don't understand why you received a certain grade:
First, look at the rubric / grading form. It might not provide all the exact details but it should at least give an indication.
Second, review the assignment instructions closely and compare how your submissions adhered to them.
If you still have a question or believe there was a grading mistake (which does happen), please feel free to contact me.
Resubmitting Work
For almost all assignments, you are able to resubmit because I am generally more in favor of formative assessment over summative assessment.
Even if you are submitting the same link or something, you need to actually resubmit the assignment in Canvas in order for it to pop up for me to grade.
For Discussion assignments ONLY, send me a message to let me know you have editted your discussion post since it isn't technically a resubmission and it doesn't pop up for me to grade.
Late Work
I have Canvas set up to assign a 0 for assignments that are not submitted by the due date to give you a more accurate current grade in the gradebook (more information below).
If you submit an assignment after the due date it will continue to show a 0 until it is graded. It may take longer for late work to get graded compared to work that is submitted on time.
I have Canvas set up to apply a late penalty of 1% per day.
The late penalty applies to resubmissions.
If it did not, students would be rewarded for turning in something incomplete or incorrect on time with the intention to resubmit later. This would be a waste of time for graders.
My rationale for accepting late work:
Your learning is the most important thing to me and I still want you to have a reason to do the work even if it is late.
I know that life gets in the way sometimes.
My rationale for having a late penalty:
I am trying to prepare you for the work environment, where if the proper product is not delivered on time there are negative consequences.
I hope it motivates you to do work on time and not let assignments snowball on you.
It rewards students who manage their time and get work in on time.
For many assignments it is easier to grade them all together.
Optional Work
I set up Canvas to give extra credit for optional assignments through assignment groups (see the Create Extra Credit using Weighted Assignment Groups section in Canvas Guides). If you are looking at your Current Grade, it will look like your grade goes down if you don't do an optional / extra credit assignment but when you look at your Final Grade you will see that it actually does not. It is always possible to get a 100% in the class without doing any optional / extra credit work. Even if you get 5 out of 100 points on an optional / extra credit assignment it is still increasing the number of total points you have earned and therefore is increasing your final grade.
Current Grade vs Final Grade
Your current grade is based on assignments that have been submitted and graded. This number will go up and down throughout the semester and is an estimate of what your final grade is likely to be if you keep doing what you are doing, but it can be misleading if you have missing work that hasn't been set to 0 (see the Late Work section above). For example...
if you have submitted 5 assignments that have been due up to a certain point in the semester out of 20 total assignments thoughout the semester, and you have earned a 100% on all of them, your current grade will be 100%.
if you have submitted only 3 of the 5 equally weighted assignments that have been due up to a certain point in the semester and you have earned 100% on all of them...
if the 2 missing assignments are not set to 0, your current grade would be 100%.
if the 2 missing assignments are set to 0, your current grade would be 60%.
Your final grade is based on all assignments no matter whether they have been submitted and graded or not. This number will only go up. It represents the percentage of points you have earned vs total points possible. This number is what is used for your final letter grade.
When you have submitted 5 assignments that have been due up to a certain point in the semester out of 20 total equally weighted assignments thoughout the semester, and you have earned a 100% on all of them, your final grade will be 25%.
