EXAMINATIONS and GRADING

EXAMS: There will be 4 exams during the course and one final examination. Each hour exam will be worth 100 points. The final exam will be comprehensive and will be worth 200 points.

QUIZZES: Weekly quizzes will be given during the recitation sections on weeks without one of the major examinations. During the examination weeks, just like in the BIOC 445 course, there will be a computer-based problem solving question to challenge during your scheduled recitation period. Your best 6 quizzes and the 4 computer-based tests will add and additional 100 points to your class score.

TUTORIAL CASES: During the course you will be working on 4 on-line tutorial cases. The cases will be graded similarly to the tutorial grading in BIOC 445 and each case will contribute an additional 25 points to your class score.

GRADUATE STUDENTS:  Students taking this course for graduate credit will be required to write a term paper (worth a maximum of 100 points). The quality of the term paper will be factored into the course grade. Please see "Guidelines for Writing the Term Paper" included in this syllabus.

Grade assignments: There is a total of 800 points that can be obtained in this class (900 for graduate students). We will drop the lowest 100 point exam, quiz/computer grade, tutorial grade or paper (for graduate students) and base the grade calculations on the remaining exams and quizzes (700 points).

Students are cautioned to not take the grading strategy in this course as an excuse to “blow off” one of the exams, quizzes, or tutorial. All are required components of the course. Do your best on each of the tests and do not decide to avoid one section of the course. If you do that section will come back to haunt you on the final exam. If you must miss one of the exams for a University sponsored activity you should see the instructor to make arrangements to take the exam ahead of time. Without prior approval there are no make-up exams.

Grading in this course is not determined on a curve. The grade cutoffs are determined by looking for natural breaks between student scores. In the past the grade cutoffs have been around 90, 80, 70 and 60. Students earning an average of 90% or better can expect to receive the grade of A and students with an average below 60% can expect to receive a grade of F. Using this grading criteria in the typical semester, over half of the assigned grades are As and Bs. This would not happen were a curve rather than a defined criteria were used to assign grades.

Student responses on all exams are statistically analyzed and questions that are judged to be poor or confusing based on these statistics are not considered when assigning exam scores.

Errors in Grading: Errors in grading will be corrected by the faculty and must be reported promptly after an exam is returned. Students wishing to have their exam re-graded should submit their examto the course chair with a memo indicating the question number and explanation of the grading discrepancy.