How is a student's overall grade average in a specific section calculated?
The Overall Average grade for a student in a specific section is an average of all the graded assignment points in the gradebook. This is made more complex by weighting the overall average grade in a couple different ways (which are all optional):
1) Grading Units
2) Grading Categories
3) Assignment Point Values
This article explains each of these weighting options along with a few examples.
Grading Units
Grading Units are used to divide the Academic Term into traditional "report card periods." A few of the options for Grading Units are Semesters, Quarters or Trimesters. These are set up by the school's admin. If an academic term does not need to be divided (Summer School for example) then they wouldn't be used.
- Unweighted Units means “Cumulative Grades” – an average of all individual student grades received throughout the year
- Weighted Units means an average of each Grading Unit (Grading Period – quarters, semesters, trimesters).
For more information see our article titled Grading Units
Grading Categories
Grading Categories are optional and add a level of weighting to the gradebook within a current Grading Unit (Semester, Quarter, Trimester). For example, each assignment would be assigned to a category such as Tests, Homework or Participation and those could be weighted as Tests = 70%, Homework is 20% and Participation is 10% of the Overall Grade in the course. Admins or Teachers can set up Grading Categories for a course. This is determined by the school.
For more information see our article - Gradebook Settings and How do weighted grade categories work?
Assignment Point Values
There are two types of assignments - Graded items (added via the Grades > Gradebook page) and Homework (added to the Homework page). Both are created with a max point value for that assignment.
If you want all assignments to be weighted equally then use the same point value for every assignment. If you have a 30 point assignment and a 100 point assignment in the same category, the 100 point assignment will effectively be weighted over 3 times more than the 30 point assignment.
To calculate a category grade average:
OR, written arithmetically...
- Add up the points earned by the student in that category (including extra credit)
- Add up the points possible for the assignments in that category (excluding extra credit)
- Divide the the sum of points earned by the sum of points possible for that category
(Grade 1 points earned + Grade 2 points earned + ...) ÷ (Grade 1 points possible + Grade 2 points possible + ...)
For example...
There are two tests (96/100 and 85/100) and 1 extra credit assignment (5 pts) in the Test category. The tests are worth 100 points each. The category average would be calculated as follows:
(96 + 85) / 200 = 90.5%
In the above screenshot of the gradebook, an Extra Credit (EC) Assignment is shown as a hidden grade. This allows us to show you how it would affect the average grade. The visible grade (before EC) is a 90.5% and the hidden grade (after EC) is a 93%.
An Override Average is available for each grading unit average (quarterly in these examples) and the Final Average. It can also be accomplished from each student's Grade page (click on the Student's name in the Gradebook or Averages tab).