Final Grades Notes

After the final exam was graded I processed all the course grades as described in the syllabus.  They are now posted.  Here are the adjustments I made – all in your favor:

• Attendance was adjusted to allow two misses without penalty
• Discussion scores were adjusted so that the lowest score was dropped
• Lab scores were adjusted so that the lowest score was dropped
• Scores were rounded when determining the letter grade

Overall the class did very well.

Notes on reading your “Most” & “Least successful” answers

• Most of you found much to like in the course, though the specifics varied.  Some liked the labs, some the reading/discussion.  And almost everyone liked the field trips, especially the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge Trip.
• Some of you, especially environmental engineers, felt that the environmental portion of the course was too separate from the rest.
• Some didn’t like the discussions, though others found them most helpful.
• One person was strong in their criticism of Access Science as having little they found worthwhile
• Many liked meeting the department faculty
• Several felt that the lab periods could be better used
• One person wanted physical experiments – you’ll get them in CAE-210.

Thank you all for a good term, and thanks especially to the Shamia, Lauren and Jonathan for making the course flow so well.

Jim Mitchell

Exam Grading Status

As of 5:30 on Tuesday (6/8/2010) we’ve completed the first pass on grading the exams.  The grades there ARE NOT YET FINAL.

We are very much in the process of reviewing the grades for difficulties that we’ll resolve over the next 24 hours.  Several students have written that apparently correct answers have been marked as wrong by VistaBB.  I’ll be working with IRT on Wednesday to figure out the source of the problem and to resolve it.

In the meantime I’m glad to hear about specific difficulties that you identify so I can include them in my review.

Jim Mitchell

Cumulative Grade Calculations

There is now a cumulative grade for the course showing in VistaBB, labeled Grade Calc.  I plan to update it every week or two.  It shows your numeric grade (out of 100) including all of the graded elements so far, which are the ones that will be visible to you.

Notes about the Grading Calculation

• Allowance for the “free” (ie. you can miss without penalty) items will be made only at the end of the term.  That means that you will see an increase in your numeric grade at that point if you’ve missed something.  I’ll make that calculation in a separate spreadsheet so the final exact grade will probably not appear in VistaBB, but it will be the same as or higher than what shows in VistaBB.
• Att – stands for Attendance.  What’s shown is the number recorded for you by counting the signatures on the sign-in sheet. This total is multiplied by “5” in computing the cumulative grade.  There are 3/week.
• You can see the weighting of the various components in the “Assignment Weights” page of the syllabus.
  • Note that the Labs were originally going to be 20 points each with a weight of 5.  We changed that to 100 points each with a weight of 0.4.  There is no overall change in the contribution of the labs to your cumulative grade.
• The cumulative grade column may be hidden for periods while we input grades and update the calculation.  Check back the next day it it will probably show again.

Jim Mitchell

Seeing Graded Comments

It’s not intuitively evident how to see what the grader has provided to explain how they graded your lab.  This post explains how.  The issue lies with VistaBB’s idiosyncrasies.

Graded Labs (Assignments)

The grader creates an attachment file that explains their grading.  That file may well be a copy of the file you originally submitted with a different name.

To see that file you need to go to “Assignments” on the left hand menu, and within that click on the “graded” tab.  You’ll then see the files that are related to the assignment, both your own original and the one returned by the grader.

Graded Discussion Posts

For reasons known only to the VistaBB designers you have to click on the “My Grades” menu item on the left.  Now you’ll see a button entitled “View Graded Grading Form” that will show you the grading form with whatever comment the grader made.

Jim Mitchell

Clarifying the Discussion Requirements

The goal of the discussions is to have you look at the professional literature and also at your fellow student’s work. 

Primary Source

The requirement that everyone in a group read the “Primary Source” (at least using AccessScience as the starting point) is to ensure that there is a common ground.

Secondary Source

The secondary source may be any of those that you’re led to from the library’s reference page.  I would hope that it will in some way amplify or contradict or otherwise supplement what you have read in the primary source, but we won’t enforce that strictly, at least not initially till we see how the discussions develop in the first few weeks.  I’d certainly encourage you to link the two in what you write.

Jim Mitchell

Welcome to the CAEE-201 Blog - Spring AY 2009-10

About this Blog
We'll use this blog to post announcements and answer questions that are raised throughout this term related to CAEE-201.  I advise you to subscribe to it via an RSS reader such as Google Reader.  That way you won't have to go into VistaBB to see any changes.  There are many, many blogs available on interesting topics.  A good place to search for others that may interest you is Technorati.