Grades Updated

Grades are loaded on OWL and SPIRE.

There were alot of good grades!  I went as low as 68.5% to give “C”, in order to be sure than anybody on that C/C- boundary got the benefit of the doubt.

FinalPointsHistogram

Grading scale:

score    n                    grade
>540    48    16%    A
>530    11    4%    A-
>519    18    6%    B+
>479    46    15%    B
>474    8    3%    B-
>470    10    3%    C+
>411    80    27%    C
>396    17    6%    C-
>336    31    10%    D
38    13%    F

Points came from:

1) exams + blog (70% of points): 420 points (100 per MT, 120 for final; up to 5 extra points added for blog participation).

The lowest MT was replaced by a better final (on a percentage basis!) as shown by the extra column of numbers in the OWL Gradebook.

2) Lab (17% of points) 100 points

3) OWL (10% of points) 60 points.

4) PRS (3% of points) 20 points.

*******************************

Letter grades have been placed on SPIRE

Letter grade regions will be pretty close to traditional percentages, but this is key:  you need a passinge exam average to pass the class. I accepted an exam average as passing if it were greater than 54%.

23 thoughts on “Grades Updated

  1. Ashley Kosinski

    Professor Knapp is our maximum grade supposed to be 600 or 605? I thought the blog participation was bonus points.

  2. chem111-mjknapp Post author

    “I fixed this”

    thanks for the heads-up about my goof on the OWL graceperiods. They are all fixed now.

  3. chem111-mjknapp Post author

    doh! I forgot to approve the graceperiod on my initial pass – it is corrected now.

  4. Alissa Martin

    Hi Prof. Knapp,

    Will you post an answer key to the final exam?

    Have a good holiday everyone!
    Thanks,
    Alissa

  5. Adam Raymond

    Professor,
    I logged in to OWL and it looks none of the OWLs that I did within the grace period say that I completed them on time. What should I do about this?

  6. Aidan Gilchrist

    Since you extended the OWL deadlines by 24 hours would that cause the past due assignments that were completed in the 24 hour grace period to get a green check. Im just wondering because that didn’t happen to mine.

  7. Emily Tran

    Professor,
    Is there an answer key of MT3 because I would like to see what I got wrong on the exam?

  8. chem111-mjknapp Post author

    Aimee-
    the class average for MT3 was 70. Format for the final will be multiple choice, enough questions to take two hours (most likely to be 50 questions).

  9. Aimee Contois

    Professor,
    I was wondering what the class average was for just MT3. Also, do you know the format yet for the final (ie number of questions) or are you just going to go over it in class friday?

  10. chem111-mjknapp Post author

    Kelly,
    The recent histogram which included MT1, MT2, and blog showed approximate grade regions. As a student, you need to focus on the material, and keeping up with the reading, and working practice problems successfully. The trick is to understand the problems as you work through them – when you understand the underlying principles, you have totally succeeded, and a suitable letter grade will follow.
    Translating exam scores into letter grades is tough, due to two competing factors. The first factor is that 30% of your point total comes from things that are slam-dunk points for every student if they just show up and put forth some effort (lab, PRS, OWL). This 30% of points inflates everybody’s grade (you might see a 71% exam average turn into a 77% overall average) – something like a half-grade (from a C to a C+, or C+ to B-, or something like that). This is great!
    But what about a student who has a very low exam average (lets say 50%)? – when the inflated class average is calculated, they might see something like a 61% result. Is that a passing grade? This leads to the second factor – students need to do more than just show up and stay awake to pass a college class. So in General Chemistry, a passing exam average is needed to get a passing grade in the class. And the definition of ‘passing’ is around a 60% on the exams – but that might shift slightly depending on the exam average. For an example of this, consider MT1 (avg ~ 74) and MT2 (avg ~ 64); a score of 65 on MT1 was not so great, but the same score on MT2 was not so bad.

  11. Kelly

    Professor,
    The majority, if not all, of the class needs a C in order to pass this class. You said a 72%-73& is your anticipated class average but I was just wondering if that is considered a C- or a C in this class?

  12. chem111-mjknapp Post author

    Hi Jason,
    I guess that I do not round. But what I really do is use the point-total (600!), not the percentage (parts per 100). However, if you get 513.4 points, I probably would round that down to 513 (but not to 86%).

  13. Jason

    Professor,
    I was just wondering if lets say I got a 79.5 final average would you round it to 80 or not because last year I had a professor that did not round his grades and would of left it as a 79.

  14. chem111-mjknapp Post author

    Hi Sherwood,
    Sorry for any confusion. But the bonus points for blog participation have all been added and placed into the OWL gradebook. There will not be any further bonuses for blog use.

  15. Sherwood

    Professor,
    To get the full 5 points for blogging we have to blog everyday from now till the exam? I was so confused in class when you mentioned it today?

  16. Sherwood

    Kristine he said that he would give us points for the first couple of weeks because a lot of people couldn’t register in class

  17. Kristine Hughes

    Hi professor,
    I just checked my grades in OWL for the first time in a while and I realized I’m missing PRS grades for 9/9/09 & 9/16/09. I know that I have only missed PRS once (10/26/09), and I believe these were days that I could not connect my PRS to the class. Is it too late to change this? Thank You

    Best Regards,
    Kristine Hughes

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