“What’s my grade?” The honest answers “It depends” or “It’s complicated” might do more harm than good. For a student with limited quantitative literacy, grade weights and conditional grades can be overwhelming. To help students understand that they have a range of grade possibilities, we’ve created a Grade Speculation Calculator. This is a spreadsheet into which students enter their known grades, and then their totals of points earned and lost are calculated. Students can also enter speculative grades on future items to see how the results impact their final grades. Through this, students learn to optimize their remaining opportunities. In this workshop, we will present example syllabi and their corresponding Grade Speculation Calculators. We discuss the value of this as both motivation tools and advising tools. Participants are encouraged to bring their own syllabi to begin developing their own Grade Speculation Calculators. Facilitated by Professor Emma Wright, Mathematics.
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