Hi Everyone, The grade weighting exercise was an interesting experience. About half-way through in answering a question I mentioned that the final grade, of course, would be subject to our college's mandatory curve. This changed everything. Suddenly the weighting deliberations shifted from a peer evaluation (team maintenance) weight of around 70% to a weight of around 15%. It turns out that with fixed grade ranges, a heavy peer-evaluation weighting could yield grades far exceeding 100 points giving a large proportion of the class an "A". Once it was clear that I would be forced to grade on a curve instead of fixed grade ranges, the students saw what they considered an easy shot at an A evaporate, and the discussion moved on then with the knowledge that the grade would truly be a "fair" one based on their actual performance. FYI, the final weights were peer evaluation 20%, individual performance 30% and team performance 50%. In the future, I will discuss the curve right at the start of class so we don't have this misunderstanding! Live and learn... Because it was somewhat misleading without the curve, I'm going to remove the spreadsheet from my Web site. You can still access it at: http://web.njit.edu/~bieber/CIS677F04/grade-weights.xls Note that it is "protected" in Excel, but without a password, so you can turn the protection off and modify any part of it. If I can figure out how to incorporate a curve on the spreadsheet, I will add this. Cheers, Michael >Hi Everyone, > >I put together a spreadsheet that (I believe) lets students see the >impact of different grade weights (appendix C from [Michaelsen, >Knight & Fink 2004] allows students to negotiate these) on Larry >Michaelsen's grading scheme that awards points to peer >evaluation/team management in the final course grade (appendix B, >option 1)... > >Thanks, > >Michael -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Bieber, Associate Professor - Collaborative Hypermedia Research Lab (Co-Director) - IS Ph.D. Program (Director) - Digital Library Service Integration Project (PI) Email: [log in to unmask] URL: http://web.njit.edu/~bieber AOL/MSN/Yahoo Instant Messenger: profbieber Phone: (973) 596-2681 FAX: (973) 596-5777 [email preferred] Information Systems Department (http://is.njit.edu/) College of Computing Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology 5500 Information Technology Center University Heights, Newark, New Jersey 07102-1982 USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------------