<p>At first I thought the daughter was correct, but now I agree with those that say the extra credit was to give a slight boost, not a 10% boost, in the grade. My guess is that the professor did not think the student that got 170 plus 20 ec points deserved the same grade as the student that got 190 points without the ec. Or that the students that chose not to do the ec should be penalized. It may also be that the ec points were given simply for doing the work, not based on quality, making the 20 points less meaningful. </p>
<p>By my calculations, it boosted the grade by about a point, which seems about right for extra credit in college. Unless these were incredibly challenging and time consuming projects, it doesn’t make sense that an ec assignment could boost the grade from a B to an A. If your numbers match reality, it may have taken her from a B to a B+ however. </p>
<p>Please let us know what the prof says if your daughter decides to question this. As others have said, she may want to go back and read the syllabus and check the prof’s web site before asking.</p>
<p>Just to clarify (again), I didn’t use the actual numbers in my example (and now wish I had). There’s no 10% boost at issue here, but the difference in the two calculations will mean the difference between a B+ and an A- in her grade. The prof’s calculation raised her points for the course from 88.1 to 88.3. Her calculation raised it to 90.1. Can someone who’s better at math than I am confirm for me the percentage by which two perfect extra credit assignments raised her grade by his method? Am I correct that its two-tenths of one percent? Does that change anyone’s mind? It seems absurd to me. In any case, she emailed him (using some of the suggestions provided here–thank you) and is waiting to hear back.</p>
<p>The syllabus does not mention the extra credit opportunity at all. In retrospect, I think the reasonable thing for him to do would have been to explain the maximum potential impact of the extra credit assignments in detail so my D could have decided if they were worth her time. In fact, had he bothered to do that, he would likely have realized early on that his methodology was flawed and found another way to adjust grades for extra credit.</p>
<p>I know this is looking like making a mountain out of a molehill, but it could be critical to her ability to graduate with honors, and she believes that her most recent semester grades will be important to her grad school apps. I think we can agree that psychologically, an A- looks a lot better than a B+, even though they are adjacent grades.</p>
I agree that the 0.2 increase is so minimal as to be relatively insignificant leading one to question the point of the EC and the 2 point increase is pretty significant. I wouldn’t expect the EC to be as insignificant as the .2 increase but not much more significant than the 2 point increase with the expectation lying somewhere in between. But - we’re applying our expectations and logic to this and the prof could have a different expectation (and sense of logic!) that could apply.</p>
<p>Does the professor use the MyGrades function to post grades in Blackboard? One thing I have found is that sometimes the numbers “stick” when I enter grades and a grade of 85 might post as just 8 or 5 and I don’t always catch that. She should check to see that all points have been posted. I always try to take a second look at those students whose grades are just below the next letter grade in case there’s a posting error on my part. There are so many distractions during finals week that I have caught myself (or been caught) making a mistake in the posting of letter grades. I think the key is to ask politely.</p>
<p>If two students have the same grade pre-extra credit, but one student does poorly on the extra credit assignment and the other one doesn’t attempt it at all, I see no reason why the former should get a poorer grade.</p>
<p>My guess is that the prof is using some kind of automated system to generate the % scores and the grades, and that he/she didn’t click all of the boxes appropriately when adding the extra credit assignments to the system. It’s probably just an error. Hope the prof understands what went wrong with the automated calculation.</p>
<p>Depending on the class it would seem that getting a 10% potential boost is a lot. My son’s Chem class offered one extra credit of a max of 40 points. The total points for the class were 1000 potential so that would only be .04%. So his offer must also have been for those students who needed just a little extra to get to the next notch in grading as tetrahedron said.</p>
<p>MommaJ has explained that the actual boost should have been from 88.1 to 90.1–perfectly reasonable for two extra credit assignments, each marked 100%.</p>
<p>That would be 4% (40/1000 = 4/100 = 4%), not .04%.</p>
<p>One of my D’s teachers last year couldn’t do math, and had an extra-credit scheme that could have resulted in a lower grade and had no chance of increasing any grade by more than a few tenths of a percent. She was up-front about how the calculation would be done (and utterly oblivious to the fact that it did not result in the outcome she said she intended, which was a few percent).</p>
<p>I think the Prof made a mistake and I’ve seen the exact mistake with my D in high school. In her case, there was a “score” column and a “total point” column. Grade is calculated by total number of points earned divided by total possible points. The teacher entered 5 for her score, BUT also entered 5 for total points, which just made it another assignment, NOT extra credit. Teacher should have entered a zero in the total points column.</p>
<p>Your D should definitely bring this to his attention.
From my experience, mistakes are made more times than one would imagine from people you think would know how to do things.</p>
<p>Edit; I bet the same mistake was made for all who did the extra credit…have your D have other e-mail as well.</p>
<p>Puzzled and interested in learning/understanding always works better than confrontation and entitlement especially when dealing with professors, customer service people, family, bosses.</p>
<p>with those actual numbers, no doubt in my mind the prof screwed up the math when entering online. Denominator should have remained at 1000. Extra credit was 2% of final grade(if perfect score was obtained), sounds reasonable.
2 points would boost a half grade to some, depending on their final grade. A final grade of 83 or 84 would still be a B even with 20/20 on the extra credit. An 85 or 86 would bump to a B+ In your D’s case, a B+ to an A-, which is why she did the extra credit…to hopefully bump a half grade up…</p>
<p>Thanks all. Now all she needs to do is get the school to adopt a new rule that the consensus of CC opinion is dispositive in all grading matters!</p>
<p>Just wondering if she felt that she learned anything from the extra credit assignments, or enjoyed them at all. Sometimes grades become the focus in education in a way that obscures the original purpose of school. Remembering this is helpful to my kids, so just mentioning it as an aside. </p>
<p>Extra credit can be offered as a way to go deeper for kids who have the interest, and can lead to benefits (or opportunities) beyond a boost in grades. Rather than advocating for herself over a half-point in a grade, perhaps the daughter could ask the professor for a position as an assistant or research job or recommendation later, that kind of thing- based on the work ethic, interest and talent shown by the extra credit work.</p>
<p>compmom, you have an idealistic view of college life and college kids, and I hope it turns out to be an accurate one for your kids. My D is a senior with a full schedule, including a capstone project, so has no interest in working for this prof, and she has her recommendations lined up already. I haven’t asked whether she learned anything from the extra credit assignments, but my best guess is that she did them for the reason they were offered and the same reason as everyone else who did them–to boost a marginal grade. I think it would be foolish not to advocate for receiving what she deserves. So far, it’s just taken an email; hopefully that will be all it takes.</p>
<p>Two of my kids are through and one is half way through. We have to pick our battles for advocacy due to serious health issues in two of my kids. Rather than being idealistic, we are pragmatic about what to push bureaucracies on. For those issues that we do have to let go, we try to be positive and remember, as I said, the original reason for education. It helps.</p>
<p>The suggestions were not meant to be in place of e-mailing, but a possible positive route if the effort was not successful.</p>