Final grades

UPDATE 2: I think all the + and - parts are fixed now. I will check again shortly and again (later) in the morning.
UPDATE: Bear with me, I put in some of the + and - parts in wrong in myBama. Correcting it now, should be done by 01:30.

I am about to put up final grades on Moodle, and then on myBama. By the time I hit 'post' on this thing, they should be on Moodle already. There will be a new column called "Final Grade" which is just what it sounds like. The difference between this number and the "Course Total" is due to the bonus you may have received for improving on the assessment test, and extra credit if you did it. As before, please let me know if anything seems to be in error (e.g., missing HW or lab grades).

If there is anything I hate more than having to boil your entire performance down to a single letter (perhaps with a + or -), I don't know what it would be. It is agonizing to try and decide who gets what, and I end up sitting in front of the spreadsheet for hours making sure I didn't miss anything. It is by far the worst part of the job, I would much prefer to just say 'yea' or 'nay' and be done with it. What really happens is this: I grade the final exams twice, check the spreadsheet many times, and then look at each calculated final grade. If you're close to the borderline between grades, I look a few more times at your individual grades, and take yet another look at your final exam. I do what I can, and round up where I can justify it, but it always ends up that some people are just short of a letter grade, and it can't be helped.

In the end, after the final exam some of you moved up a letter grade, and some moved down. That's how it always ends up, and as a result, some of you will be happy and some of you will be quite unhappy. I hate to see people move down based on the final exam, but it has to happen in some cases, given that it is worth 25% of your grade. I was generally pleased with how it came out. A few of you really pulled yourselves up on the final, and that was good to see. A smaller number of you made a significant drop, and that is the main reason I spent a few hours going over each final exam one more time to be certain.

Anyway: I had a lot of fun this summer, and it was a pleasure to have all of you. Whether or not your grade came out how you wanted it to, I hope it seems fair at least, and more importantly, I hope you learned something useful.

Grade update

Pretty much all grades are up on moodle now, including the final exam scores (they took a long, long while to grade). The morning section averaged about 79% on the final, the afternoon section 75%. I graded it pretty leniently in the end, since time was definitely a factor. As a result of fairly lenient grading, scaling wasn't really necessary.

Tomorrow some time I will post a final grade average, taking into account all the dropped grades, the bonus for taking the assessment test, extra credit, etc. Letter grades will be posted on myBama on Tuesday, probably in the morning.

Again, check your grades to make sure that none are missing. I think everything that has been brought to my attention so far has been taken care of, but it is possible I've missed a homework or lab grade for someone yet.

If you have questions about how your final exam graded came out the way it did, I have your scores recorded by question and can answer that as well.