This post is on a grading system where everyone starts at 0 and all you do is add on to your grade. I think it is a fascinating idea. Since some of my earlier links are now disappearing as people move or drop their blogs, I am going to quote a lot of this. And sometime soon I am going to think about it a lot and see if I could incorporate it into my college classroom.
“Dr J’s grading system was thus:
1800+ points earned an A
1600-1799 points earned a B
1400-1599 points earned a C
1200-1399 points earned a D
1199 points and below earned an FWe were graded on the following:
Four short papers.
Two long papers.
Four tests.
Attendance.
Various sundry other small projects.
Extra credit.There was no possible way to lose points. No matter what you did, no matter how many questions you got wrong, no matter how many classes you missed, no matter how bad your paper was, the worst that could happen was that your point total did not increase. Everyone started at 0, and Dr J set up his point system so that it was challenging but not impossible to get an A. He also allowed us to do certain types of extra credit projects – bringing in relevant articles, making videos, et al – that could supplement our grades as much or as little as we liked.
Getting a 0 on a paper or test in Dr J’s class was not a world-breaker because we couldn’t lose any points. If we missed a quiz, we got 0 points added to our total, and had the option to make up the quiz at the end of the semester or accept the 0 and what it did to our point total.
Attendance, by the way, was worth 15 points per day, and class occurred twice weekly. If Dr J ever cancelled a class, everyone received 15 points for the day.
It was definitely one of the most interesting classes I ever took, at least in terms of keeping up with the grading system. People brought in all sorts of extra credit projects…”
Go read the entry to find out about hte interesting extra credit projects.