Class Assignments and Grading

by Mike Gleicher on February 17, 2012

The original class assignments and grading page was written before I knew I had TA support, before I knew how many people were in the class, before I had any idea of how Piazza would work out, …

It also wasn’t very concrete. Here is an attempt to clarify expectations.

Grading

Grading will be arbitrary and subjective and totally at the instructor’s discretion. It may involve randomness.

More seriously: a lot of the grading of this class is subjective. I put some of the responsibility on you as a student to convince me that you have learned the material, rather than on me for designing fair and diagnostic assessment procedures.

What we will have:

  1. Two 5 week projects. These will be letter graded.
  2. There will be four “seek and find” assignments. (these will be graded “none, unaccaptable, acceptable, notable”)
  3. There will be two design challenges (with redesign)
    1. The initial designs will be graded “none, unaccaptable, acceptable, notable”
    2. The discussion phase will be graded check/nocheck (we’ll count posts)
    3. The final phase will be letter graded
  4. There will be readings – some with required Piazza writing, and some without. The required postings will be scored (“none, unaccaptable, acceptable, notable”)
  5. There will be class and community – both lectures and online discussion to participate in. (these will be scored “none, unaccaptable, acceptable, notable”)

The “objective measures” for subjective things are weak proxies for what I really want to measure:

  • Are you learning the messages in the lecture?
  • Are you doing (and learning from) the readings?
  • Are you participating in the class as a community (both to learn from your peers and help them learn)?

What will will measure:

  • Did you make the required postings (with more than a minimal post) (automatic counting)?
  • Did you make more than the required postings (automatic counting)?
  • Did you make notable online contributions (subjective spot checking)?
  • Are you “there” for class (occassional attendance taking, and subjective sampling)? Note that hiding in the back might be as bad as night being there. “I think you’ve been all the time there but I am not sure what your voice sounds like” is probably worse than “I really notice when you’re not there.”

Implicit in this is the expectations: you will do the required postings, and contribute to online conversation. You will contribute to class. We will allow for the possibility that you can make up for one without the other.

For an explicit grading scheme:

  • The 2 projects and assignments (collectively) each count for roughly 1/3 of your grade.
  • Rather than viewing assignments and readings as a percentage, they are more of an adjustment/requirement. We adjust your grade by a half letter grade away for each.
  • For an 838 student, to get an A, we expect that at least one of readings or participation will be better than just acceptable, and that neither is unacceptable. If you get As on all 3 graded parts, you need to do well enough on the more subjective parts to get an A for a final grade.
  • For a 638 student, to get an A, we expect that on average, readings and participation should be acceptable. You will get “bonuses” for doing better. If you get Bs on the graded parts, but really excel in participation and reading, you might get an A.

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