PHY2049 Grading Policy
 
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Final Grade Determination

Your final grade is based on several activities:
  • 3 progress exams (during class)
  • One final exam (2 hours, rooms & time announced later)
  • 9 TA quizzes (administered during discussion sections)
  • 16 WebAssign assignments (performed online at home)

Your final score (120 points max) is the sum of the following:

  Source Points   How calculated
  TA Quizzes
20
  Best 7 of 9 quizzes
  WebAssign
20
  16 assignments, scaled (see below)
  Exams
80
  Best 3 of 4 exams (see below)
  Total
120
   

Note: Because of hardware problems, the SRS remote transmitters are not being used this semester. We will resume their use in Spring 2007.

TA quiz grade: In order to make the quiz grades across TAs consistent and fair, we adjust grades to take into account differences between TAs. We also drop the lowest two quiz grades (therefore, no makeups).

WebAssign grade: WebAssign homework covers all 16 chapters with several problems per chapter (it will vary per assignment). We will scale the scores so that students can miss 5 questions over the semester and still obtain a perfect WebAssign score.

Exam grade: There are a total of four exams, three "progress exams" given in class and a final exam given at the end of the semester that will count twice as much. Exam questions will be taken from a number of sources, including, but not limited to, the textbook, lectures and assigned problems. 50% of the final exam will cover the last section of the course and 50% will cover the overall course. Exam format is multiple choice using ScanTron (10 questions for exams 1-3 and 20 questions for the final)..

The calculation of the total exam points is as follows. Let T1, T2, T3 and F be your raw scores on the exams (max scores are 10, 10, 10, 20).

  • Exam total = 2 * [T1 + T2 + T3 + F - min(T1,T2,T3,F/2) ]

No make-up exams will be given since we allow an exam to be dropped (without documentation). If an exam is missed for any reason (illness, family issues, religious observances, tardiness, travel), then that consitutes the dropped exam in our "best 3 out of 4" scoring method. We will only consider exceptional cases such as long-term illness, but these are expected to be rare.

Total grade: Total = Exam total + TA Quizzes + WebAssign

Letter grade: Total minimal scores (out of 120 points) ensuring a particular letter-grade are shown below. Note that this scale is absolute and will not be adjusted to a curve. This fact ensures that there is no competition between students.

  Grade
Minimum
  A
100.00
  B+
93.00
  B
85.00
  C+
77.00
  C
68.00
  D+
58.00
  D
48.00
 

Exam Procedure & Allowed Materials

  • You must bring your GatorOne ID to the exam!
  • Bring pencil, eraser, sharpener, calculator
  • Bring one 8.5"x11" formula sheet (both sides OK)
    On the final exam, 2 formula sheets are allowed.
  • Bring (blank!) scratch paper. We are unable to provide paper to everyone.

Finding your grade

All grades are posted in WebAssign.

Discussion Quizzes

Quizzes take place sometime during the week as shown on the schedule page. Material that will be covered will be specified by the TA.

  • Closed book, no notes
  • Each discussion section instructor sets his/her own quizzes and scoring (though quiz grades will be normalized to account for different TA averages)
  • Two drops are allowed. No make-ups for missed quizzes will be possible

WebAssign Assignments

Online homework is given weekly using the WebAssign system. Each individual problem counts the same amount. All WebAssign homework must be completed by 11PM on the due date. Because of the large number of students, we do not allow any exceptions. Be sure to start the online homework early.