Gradebook Terminology

There are many ways to customize and weight grades. Familiarize yourself with the following Gradebook terms to understand how the course grade is calculated:

For each student, this is the sum of each assignment's score multiplied by the assignment's weight. The Total Score also displays the total possible points for the course (in parenthesis) in the column heading. The course total includes points for all assignments, including those that are hidden and regardless of their unavailable dates.

Most problems have a default score of 1.0 for a correct answer, and so the assignment score equals the number of correct answers. However, CengageNOWv2 offers many ways to set up and score problems to adjust or weight this value:

° Homework and Test assignment types allow you to modify the possible score for individual questions from the assignment creation wizard. See Editing Your Assignment for details.

° You can alter the possible score of the entire assignment with the Possible score and Curve factor of options. See Editing Assignment Options for details.

° You can adjust the scores of groups of assignments by placing them in a custom Grading Category and weighting the category. See Creating and Editing Custom Grading Categories for details.

Note:

Total Score

This is a percentage calculated as the sum of assignment points earned to date divided by the possible score. Any custom Grading Categories that are used are also applied. When the Gradebook Preference to Include missing assignments in totals option is checked, all assignments report to course score, and when it is unchecked, only submitted assignments are included (this can be assignments submitted by an overt submission or submitted by default because of the arrival of an unavailable date.)

This is the number of points a student could earn for an assignment, if he or she achieved a perfect score. The calculations for the student's actual gradebook score can be modified by other factors such as category weighting and curve factor.

Assignments can be assigned as extra credit by creating a custom grading category. Points earned as extra credit are added to the points earned, but not to the total possible score, when calculating the total grade (Total Score / Possible Score = Overall Grade).

For example, suppose you set up a class with nine regular assignments and one extra-credit assignment. If each assignment is worth 10 points, the possible score for the course is 90. But a student who scored 100% on everything, including the extra-credit assignment, would score 111% for the course (100 / 90 = 1.11).

The Category Score represents a student's grade for each category of assignments in the course. Creating your own Grading Categories is optional: you create them on the Gradebook page as a means to adjust score weighting for a whole group of similar assignments. If you have not created any Grading Categories beyond the initial default category, the default category score is the final score for the course. See Creating and Editing Custom Grading Categories for more information.

The category weight is a value that you set. Only categories containing at least one assignment that has been taken or is past due are counted.

The final score is the sum of the category scores and reflects the student's grade for the course. If a category is empty (i.e., the assignments have not yet been taken), that category's score is excluded.