Gradebook - Grade Names

[Eric Sandeen <sandeen@io.com>]

I'm still in the process of putting together specs for "my ideal gradebook", but
here's my thoughts on this.  :-)

Even if you can get teachers to agree that grades will either be A+, A, A-, B+,
B, B-.... or A,B,C,D.. you'll probably still need to be able to tweak the cutoff
points for each grade.  Add this to the German scheme described below, plus
several others I'm sure, and it looks like there's quite a need for
customization.

I'd suggest making some defaults (i.e., A>=90%, B>=80%, C>=70% etc) but also
allow teachers to make the grade "names" anything they want, and assign some
percentage cutoff (low point) for that grade name.  If some teacher wants to
assign a "Barney" for grades higher than 92.3%, there's no reason to disallow
that!  (Well... no technical reason)  I'd suggest radio-buttoned defaults, with a
[Custom] button option.

I think most features should go this way - simple access to a default setup to
meet 80% of needs, but a customization option to let the malcontents do what they
want.

-Eric

Micah Yoder wrote:

> Bill Tihen wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > A truely useful gradebook for all teachers will be difficult, because there
> > are so many systems of grading.  For example there is the US system A, B,
> > C, D, F.  And there are US standards for what each grade gets then there
> > are the German grades (7 - 10) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (1 is the best), then there
> > is the German Abiture system (grades 11 - 13) 15, 14, .. 1 where 15 is the
> > best.  I am sure there are different systems everywhere.  However, too much
> > flexibility may lead to a difficult to use product, but just wanted to
> > remind poeple to think this through so that the comprimises that will have
> > to be made are known ahead of time.
>
> I suppose we should handle this by allowing the teacher to select the
> grading style from a pull-down menu or dialog box.  It shouldn't be
> *too* hard for us programmers to implement support for all of them.  If
> a teacher needs a different style, they can talk to us and most likely
> it will be easy to implement...
>
> I agree it would be a pain to make a totally flexible gradebook where
> EVERYTHING is completely customizable, and that's probably not
> necessary.
>
> --
> Micah K. Yoder   http://www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Shores/2359
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