Grades Entered
Folks,
I have indeed finished grading (and given them to the Department Office Assistant, to be uploaded your grades to the UCUPS system). Feel free to go and check your grades.
If the grade you have received is a surprise, then consider the following questions:
- Did you submit every piece of assigned homework? How well did you do on your homework. (In most cases, a V+ ranking is a high ranking, a V is an average ranking, a V- is a very poor ranking, and a V++ is an outstanding ranking. In a scale out of 3, V-=1; V=2, V+=3, and V++=3.5 (a bonus mark of 0.5).
- Did you attend consistently? Were you often late?
- Did you participate in course discussions? Were you active in our classes, to the extent possible for the course?
- If there were quizzes offered in the course, did you score well on the quizzes?
- Were you well-prepared for any instances in which you were expected to lead or participate in a discussion for the whole class? (ie. leading a discussion, or a panel discussion)
- Did you fulfill all the online portions of the course, such as participating in course forum discussions online, or completing blog postings?
- Did you submit the Feedback for the Presentation Contest that was assigned for your class?
If your answer is no to any of the questions, you may have discovered the reason why your grade is not what you expected. (Especially if it is lower than you expected.) As a note, #6 and #7 above were particularly a problem for some people.
A special note to students in my Understanding Anglophone Cultures Through Film: your performance on the course forum website led me, in a moment of mercy, to alter the ranking system of the grades in the following way: if you scored better on forum participation than on quizzes, then (as originally planned) the forum is worth 20% of your grade, and the quizzes only 10%. If, however, you scored better on the quizzes offered in class than on the forum, then the quizzes make up 20% of your grade, and the forum only 10%. Therefore, each of you got the highest grade possible for you. Nobody else’s grade affected yours, and in fact the ranking of students did not change through this modification. It just allowed the grades for the whole class to be a little less harsh overall.
In any case, if you think your grade is an error, then before emailing me to demand a change, I ask that you review the following two pages:
These will help you decide whether, and how, to contact me with your concerns. I assure you, if you contact me in a reasonable and polite way, I will be happy to explain how you got your grade. If an error was made I will fix it. If not, however, I do not respond well to demands, or to begging. If your whole future depends on this grade, then I expect you to have behaved that way during semester — preparing for quizzes, submitting all homework on time and as well-done as you could, never missing class without a good excuse, and so on.
Have a wonderful holiday, and feel free to check out the courses I am supposed to be teaching next semester here.