Grading

in Policies

Your grade will depend on all aspects of class.

Canvas will not show your final grade. It will not even estimate it.

Grading in this class is challenging. The quality of a project/assignment may depend on factors beyond class topics (e.g., a student’s implementation skills), and project evaluation can be quite subjective. We do not want to assess your artistic skill or your programming abilities (from before the class).

As such, this class is designed to have a large number of small activities which, if you really do them and take them seriously, will lead to you meeting the learning objectives for the class. If you actively participate consistently, I believe you will learn the lessons.

Therefore, grading emphasizes the consistent completion of small things, with less emphasis on the quality of a small number of design exercises or projects.

A way to think about class: I am convinced enough in the design of the class that if you complete all of the pieces of the class (and take them seriously), you will have learned the lessons, and deserve a decent grade (AB/B)

We may deduct (give you less than an AB) if you:

  • Do not attend lectures
  • Do not make adequate initial postings for the online discussions
  • Do not make valid submissions for the seek and finds
  • Do not take the end-of-week surveys seriously
  • Do not complete all the design exercises adequately
  • Are often late with things

Generally, it’s OK if you miss 1 or 2 of any of piece (except for the bigger design exercises). We care that you are consistent and do “sufficient” work on each piece. You get “credit” for doing anything where there is a clear attempt to do things. If you miss “a few” of something, we might lower your grade by 1/2 grade; if you miss “a lot”, we might lower your grade more.

For many of the pieces (online discussions, seek-and-finds, end-of-week surveys, design exercises), we/Canvas will give you the “point” for turning something in (e.g., making a posting). We may check after the fact (for example, if you submitted a blank quiz or posting, we might take away the point).

To get an AB or better, we expect you to meet (AB) or exceed (A) our high expectations of graduate students in our department. You can do this through some combination of:

  • Consistently making excellent postings to the online discussions, seek-and-finds, and end-of-week surveys. We won’t be able to accurately identify all excellent postings: but think of it as a sampling thing. If you’re consistently doing great work, we’ll notice.
  • Being an insightful and active member of the online community. We used to try to put minimums on online discussion, but this is forced - maybe you are in a quiet group one week, or just don’t have much to say about a topic. But, over the semester, students who are excellent members of the online community (in aggregate) usually stand out with quantity and quality of their conversation.
  • Creating excellent “projects”. For the smaller exercises (especially the in-class ones), we mainly check that people do them. But for the larger assignments, we will try to “grade” them - looking for evidence of an understanding of visualization principles (beyond just artistic talent and programming skill).

So, no - I cannot tell you exactly what you need to do to get an A. There are no percentages, or required point totals, or cutoffs. If your goal is to get an A, take a different class. If your goal is to learn a lot about visualization, this is your class.

Over the years, I’ve have tried many different ways to come up with a fair and objective way to give grades. This year, I want to focus on student learning.