recitation, grade cuts, grades, etc.

[Zellmer, Robert]

I know people are wondering how we handled the fact that out class had quizzes and
how this was accounted for.  Also, for the on-line homework.

Let's start with the Mastering.  The differences between the lecture sections was
not as pronounced as for recitation but it was taken into account in the same way
as explained below for the recitation.

For the recitation (quizzes and attendance) we took the average of the other lecture
sections, which were higher than ours and used that to make adjustments.  These
adjustments were NOT made in Carmen.  No scores in Carmen were changed.  We
always download the scores into Excel and produce a grading file.  Even in this file
no scores were physically changed.  What we did was essentially determine how
far off our average was from the average of the other sections and used that to
make internal adjustments. I fine tuned that so it wasn't necessarily the same for
everyone, especially those who didn't attend all the recitations.  There would be no
reason to "adjust" anyone's score for the recitations scores if someone only attended
a couple of recitations.  We started with the grade cuts published in the syllabus, on
page 6, which were applied to the other lecture sections.  I made these "adjustments"
in Excel based on the difference between the recitation average from the other
sections and our section average.  For most people, this raised their recitation
scores and that difference was added to your course total, proportionally based on
the fact the recitation section (quizzes and attendance) is 8% of your total course
score.  Another small adjustment was made for the Mastering.  Then I compared the
new higher totals to the normal cutoffs on page 6.  If those adjusted nonpublished
cuts were higher than those on page 6 that's where we placed the cut in our class
based on the scores you see in Carmen.  The adjustments weren't the same across
the board because they depended on your recitation attendance, although it was
pretty consistent since most people attended all, or nearly all, the recitations.  This
had the affect of taking into account the lower recitation average due to quizzes.

This resulted in lower cutoffs for each letter grade you see on page 6 of the syllabus.
All grade cuts for our class were lower than those published on page 6 and lower
than the other 1210 lecture sections.  I don't know that I want to call this a curve but
in a way it is but based on something more concrete than just a "feeling".  Actually,
there were a number of cases where we went lower than where the cut should be based
on what I described above.   For example, on page 6 you'll see the low score for a C is
67%.  We went to slightly below 65%.  This may not sound like much but it ultimately is.
Let's say the average in recitation for the other sections was 97% and you had 75% for
recitation (quizzes and attendance) and attended all the recitations so you got full credit
for attendance.  This is a difference of 22%.  But the recitation group is only 8% of
your total course score.  That means you take 22% of 8% (the weight of the recitation
group toward the final course total) which would add 1.76% to your total course score.
Not as many points as you might expect.  Thus, a lowering of the cut by 2-3% is quite
reasonable.

This doesn't mean everyone is going to wind up with a higher letter grade.  Adding
these adjustments to someone in the bottom or middle of the C range wouldn't be
enough to push you into a C+ range.  If the adjustment was 4% and you had a 67%
w/o any adjustment adding 4% would give you a 71% and the grade would still be in
the C range (see page 6).

Please rest assured I did my ultimate best to make sure having quizzes did not hurt
your letter grade in the end.  I spent several hours this weekend working on this.

Our class wound up with the averages on the exams comparable to the other lecture
sections, higher in many cases, which alone helped our classes average GPA.

I hope this helps you understand what was done and that we did take our lower
recitation average, along with Mastering scores, into account.

Dr. Zellmer
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