Extra Credit
Adding an extra credit column or columns to the Grade Center requires setting the point value of those columns to zero and including those columns in your Grade Center calculations (the default for any column created in the Grade Center).
Any points in the column(s) with a zero point total should be included in the Total column (the default when creating the column). The total possible points will not be affected by the extra credit column(s). Students who choose not to complete the extra credit item(s) will not be penalized. For instance, if the total points possible for all items (not including extra credit) in a course is 100 and extra credit items account for an additional five points, the Total column will reflect a percentage calculation of the grade that is based on a denominator of 100, not 105.
Non-Weighted Example
Assume a course in which there are four items, each worth 50 points: a mid-term exam (50 points), a mid-term paper (50 points), a class project (50 points), and a final exam (50 points). In addition, the instructor has decided to give students an extra credit option of five points. The instructor is not weighting her grades and the Total column in her Grade Center, which is a summation of all the columns in the Grade Center, represents the final grade. The instructor has the Total column showing as a Score (primary display for her students) and a percentage (secondary display for her purposes).
In this scenario adding extra credit is quite simple.
1. Create a column for the extra credit item by clicking on the Add Grade Column icon in the Grade Center Action bar.
2. In the Add Grade Column page, give your extra credit column a name, e.g., Extra Credit, assign it a Primary Display value, e.g., Score, and assign a value of 0 for the Points Possible.
3. Click on Submit.
4. You will be taken back to the Grade Center.
5. As you enter extra credit points they will show up in the Total column for those students who complete the extra credit item. This means it is possible to have percentages of greater than 100% for some students. Displaying your Total column as a letter grade (either through the primary or secondary display) will result in no letter grade being assigned to any student scoring greater than 100% since values over 100 exceed the range for the A letter category.
Weighted Example
Assume a course in which there are four items: a mid-term exam (100 points), a mid-term paper (40 points), a class project (25 points), and a final exam (200 points). In addition, the instructor has decided to give students an extra credit option of five points. The instructor is weighting her grades in the following manner: mid-term exam (25%), mid-term paper (30%), class project (15%), and final exam (30%). The instructor has an extra credit assignment worth five points.
In this scenario, the addition of the extra credit item is slightly more involved because it cannot be included in the Weighted Total column (the column in which the instructor will create the weighting scheme) since it is worth 0 points and therefore any point value given cannot be converted to a weight since the item has 0 as the denominator.
The workaround for the above scheme is to first configure the Weighted Total column to reflect the weighting scheme above, create an Extra Credit column, and then either reconfigure your existing Total column to combine the Weighted Total column and the Extra Credit column or to create an additional Total column for this combination.
Set up your Weighted Total column in the following manner:
1. In the Grade Center, mouse over the Weighted Total column header.
2. Click on the chevron icon and choose Modify Column.
3. In the Modify Column page configure your Weighted Total column to reflect your weighting scheme, i.e., weighting by item only.
4. Click on Submit and you will be taken back to the Grade Center.
Create an Extra Credit column in your Grade Center.
1. Create a column for the extra credit item by clicking on the Add Grade Column icon in the Grade Center Action bar.
2. In the Add Grade Column page, give your extra credit column a name, e.g., Extra Credit, assign it a Primary Display value, e.g., Score, and assign a value of 0 for the Points Possible.
3. Click on Submit.
4. You will be taken back to the Grade Center.
