Reweight final grade calculations
In certain circumstances, it is necessary to re-think the grading of a course. It may be that a semester is cut short, and you suddenly have to re-distribute the weight of assessments that could not be delivered as planned.
We will explore a few options for rethinking the gradebook, including the reweighting of the grades that factor into the final grade calculation.
Before you make any changes to the gradebook, be sure to export (download) the grades!
In case of any unintended changes to the students' grades, these grades can be re-imported into the gradebook.
In this example, the final exam will not be delivered, and its grades need to be redistributed across the other graded items.
Assignment 3 is being adjusted to take the place of a final assessment, and will take on the bulk of the weight from the final exam. The remaining weight will be incorporated into the first two assignments.
In addition, the instructor has decided to make Quiz 3 optional, and has told the students that the lowest of the 3 quiz grades will be dropped (to account for students who opted to not take Quiz 3).
We will walk through the necessary adjustments in the sections below.
This workflow may be useful If you need to create a scenario where a collection of grades is assessed as a group (i.e. "quizzes are worth 15% total"), and the lowest or highest will be dropped.
This tutorial assumes that you have already created the grade items, and will proceed with creating a category and moving the grade items into that category.
In the D2L Brightspace Grades tool, "bonus" items are grades that can only add value to a student's grade -- they are calculated on top of the grade calculation.
There may be some smaller graded activities that could not be completed by the whole class. What if some students already started working on them? A "bonus" item is a great way to give students credit for work they completed without punishing the students who couldn't complete it.
A possible scenario
In the example below, the students were each expected to lead groups in the labs throughout the term. At this point, 80% of the students have completed this task, but 20% cannot complete it (as labs have been cancelled).
This is now being converted to an optional task.
The remaining students have been given the option to complete an alternative activity if they would like the bonus marks. The students who do not complete it will not be penalized.