Grades- Fall Semester

Above is a standard gradebook. It lists students and their grades. HE-CMS gradebooks look similar to this gradebook. At best, HE-CMS should present you with yours grades for graded assignments, quizzes, and tests and what all your current overall grade in the class is. There are three challenges most students face when using grade books.

Know your math

Grades for your course will be calculated based on points or weights or with a formula, such as two A's and two B's equal a B+. How your grade is calculated is in your syllabus. If you do not understand how the math of how all the grades add together to create your final grade, looking at the gradebook will likely increase your confusion. Only the faculty member can explain how your grades are calculated, so ask them, not a classmate or advisor.

HE-CMS Gradebooks are not direct equations

✏️ Question? Add the following numbers: 94+76+77+82. If there are 400 points available, what is this student's percentage grade?

Gradebooks in HE-CMS require faculty members to tell the web page that A+B+C+D/400 = Grade %. Telling web pages what do do can get tricky, because then you have the language of the web page (html) in addition to the basic math.

So, unlike like a basic equation, gradebooks in HE-CMS may not show what you think they should because some setting or web page feature that students cannot see is wrong. If you see something that looks wrong about your grade, always ask. It could be that the HE-CMS gradebook is not accurately displaying the grade as the faculty member wishes it to.

Faculty are human🙂

The biggest challenge for students and gradebooks are that faculty are human, and therefore fallible. It is not uncommon for one faculty member to teach 150 students. If each of those students has 30 grades, then that is 4,500 separate grades that have to be entered for the semester. As well, the HE-CMS gradebook does the calculations itself, not the faculty, so there is enormous potential for errors, mostly small ones, to be created in gradebook. If you see something that does not seem to add up, consider sending a respectful email or asking a question during a live session. You may be correcting an error for your whole class!

Next up:

Lesson 4: Know thy technology