Grading Information

I hope you will focus less on your grades and points, and more on your learning and improvement overall. Nevertheless, it is a college course and part of my job is assigning grades (though I like to think of it as you earning grades). I am slowly moving towards ungrading as a practice, but not one I'm ready to tackle this semester.

Grades are a reflection of your learning progress. Each week, you should click on the Grades button in Canvas and review your scores and my feedback. There are no hidden points in this class. If something seems wrong or you believe you have demonstrated a grade other than what is reflected in Canvas, please reach out to start a conversation.

HOW will we be graded?

Almost every grade category presented below allows for late work. This shouldn't become the norm, but we all learn at different paces and as long as we figure out the material before the exam, we're on track to finish the semester strong! There is unlimited revisions or second attempts in almost every grade category to emphasize the LEARNING process, rather than the process of acquiring points.

The weights of these categories varies by class, so be sure to check out your class specifically.

✔️ Knowledge Checks

Knowledge checks are weekly quizzes on the video material. The goal of these knowledge checks is to give both of us feedback on what you may need more support on. As such, they have TWO attempts and some helpful hints appear after your first attempt. You can use any resource - tutors, classmates, me, as you work on them, but make sure you understand since those tend to be my favorite types of questions! These CLOSE on Sundays when I release the answers and video explanations.

💻 Online Activities

Every week there will be multiple 'activities' to complete. The goal of these activities is to spark curiosity and conceptual understanding OR to provide practice and a space for me to provide feedback. Practice will be graded for correctness while some preview activities will be graded based on effort. All online activities can be resubmitted and revised as many times as needed to learn the material before the exam for that content. There is no late penalty, but you are encouraged to submit them on time to get guidance from me!

💬 Discussion Boards

For my hybrid and 8-week courses, there will be a weekly discussion board posted on Canvas. These can also be resubmitted and revised as many times as necessary. The goal of the discussion boards is to link the concepts in class to real scenarios and data analysis while also strengthening your statistical communication and preparing you for the final project. There is a small late penalty on these items as you are expected to be able to interact and help your peers. The late penalty can be seen on the rubric.

📈 Project

There will be a capstone project in all of my statistics courses. In the 119X and hybrid courses, you will be assigned to a team for support - though most aspects are graded and completed individually and time will be given to complete project pieces during class. For the 8-week classes, the project will be individual data analysis projects done during Week 8.

💯Exams

Three (timed) exams will be given covering material from the lecture videos, activities, discussion boards, sample problems and available material. If you do not take an exam, you will receive a zero for it. Exams will be open for starting on Monday and close on Sunday at 11:59pm. If a technical issue results in your test being submitted erroneously, you may contact me before noon on Saturday for an alternate version to take.

There will be an optional cumulative final exam available during the final week of class. The final exam will replace a student’s lowest test score provided score on the final exam is higher.

DROP FROM CLASS

WARNING!

You can be dropped from the course after missing 1 week worth of class. For details on what constitutes a week in the various classes, visit the class pages.

What do I do if I miss a week?

Let me know what's going on! I will wonder where you were, so just check in and let me know what's happening. We can figure out a game plan to get back on track, if possible.

I have put a lot of thought into ways to deemphasize the exams in the course so that students will not feel compelled to cheat. I also tell you exactly what will be tested and provide a ton of sample exams. My goal is that you should be able to go into an exam confident in your ability to perform well without needing to pay someone to take your exam or ask your friend for their answers.

Evidence of cheating - getting help from a PERSON or online tutor during an exam will result in a 0 on that exam that cannot be replaced by the optional final. Sharing your notes on the exam questions will result in a 0. Posting any exam question to Chegg or Brainly or any other evil 'tutoring' site will result in a 0 on that exam AND my wrath.

Cheating and plagiarism will result in a permanent zero on an exam or assignment (all of which may lead to a failing grade in the course). For further clarification and information on these issues, please consult with your instructor or see Procedure 3100.2, Student Disciplinary Procedures.

Final Course Grade

If you're new to Mesa, there are no +/- grades.

Your final grade in the class will be based on your overall percentage:

A: ≥ 90% | B: 80-89.9% | C: 70-79.9% | D: 60-69.9% | F: <60%

Learning from Mistakes - my mantra

There are a lot of ‘try-hard’ points in my grading scheme. This is because a bunch of high stakes exams in an online class seems unreasonable to me. Most of those non-exam points are called ‘formative assessments’ - they are intended to help you understand what you do and don’t know about the material and to grow from your mistakes. As such, everything submitted on time (except exams and knowledge checks) can be corrected and resubmitted until you have a perfect score. They will close for submissions the same day as the exam for that material. Even exams and knowledge checks can be done twice!

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