Evaluation and Grades in HIST 103

This page gives an explanation of how grades are determined. Grades are arrived at by consideration of quizzes and participation. The total points possible is 600. Letter grades are awarded on a 90-80-70-60 scale. The table immediately below illustrates starkly that half your grade is determined by performance on quizzes, half by completion of participation activities (including in-class exercises and out-of-class assignments). The table below that gives the grading scale for the course. You can follow your progress toward accumulating the points required by checking the gradebook in Blackboard. In addition, in this as in all courses, you should keep copies of your work and maintain your own record. Disasters happen, after all.

Allocation of Points	Quizzes	300
	Participation	300
	Total Points	600

Grading Scale	Letter Grade	Points Required
	A	540
	B	480
	C	420
	D	380

Be sure to follow the links and read how quizzes are administered and what the expectations are for participation. You will notice, of course, that participation weighs heavily in the overall evaluation—50% of your grade. There are two reasons why I structure things this way.

1. It results in better performance overall and thus better success rates for students. In teaching a large lecture section of an introductory course, the biggest problem is disengagement. People don’t feel personally involved, and so they drift away, stop coming to class, don’t keep up with the work—and thus fail. I like to see more students succeed. This means I am a pain the butt about requiring people to come to class and, in various ways, to stay engaged with the proceedings of the course. To make this happen, I use the incentives of the point system.

2. My system promotes a show-up work ethic grounded in personal and community responsibility. It encourages habits that will serve well in work and life in future.

Hard Points & Soft Points

Like I said, the point structure is designed to promote engagement and to provide specific incentives for desired actions. The design includes the differentiation of “hard points” and “soft points.”

· Hard points: can be earned only by completing specified activities. Hard points cannot be replaced through performance of other, optional activities. (Nor is there any provision for so-called “extra credit.”)

· Soft points: are earned through the performance of optional activities—“optional” meaning you have choice as to just what you do, but you have to do something! Also, you can repeat most soft-point activities to keep increasing your score.

Here’s how the hard points and soft points shake out.

Hard Points – specifically required activities	Activity	Points Possible
	Quizzes	300
	In-Class Participation	100
	Individual List Participation	100
	Cultural Currents of the University (first completion)	20
	History in Your Community (first completion)	20
	TOTAL HARD POINTS	540

Soft Points – choose among these	Activity	Points Possible
	Cultural Currents of the University (second & third completions)	20
	History in Your Community (second & third completions)	20
	Service Learning (variable credit, agreed upon in advance)	20-60
	TOTAL SOFT POINTS	60

Note that the total possible for soft points is, in effect, one letter grade.

HIST 103 Home Page