Monday, February 18, 2013
Extra credit
It is very rare that I give students extra credit opportunities. However, this week, there is an event going on on campus that I am interested that my students in my language courses attend. Therefore, I carefully designed an assignment around that event and offered my students extra credit if they completed the assignment. What I just realized is that I never told them how much was the extra credit worth. I didn't say it when I announce the possibility of extra credit, and I didn't mention it on the document that contain the instructions for the activities. I completely forgot. What surprises me is that nobody asked. So that got me thinking: is there a "usual" "amount" of what an extra credit activity is worth? Does it depend on the activity? I had an idea in mind (and a generous one, I believe), but since I seldom do this, I wanted to ask the blogosphere if there is some sort of guide or rule to follow as to how much an extra credit activity is worth (this activity is particular, they have to attend an event on campus and then write a 2-3 pages personal reflection, in English, following the questions and prompts that I put in the assignment).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
When I have given extra credit before, I have made it either a half letter grade or a full letter grade added onto their lowest test grade, depending on how well they do on the written portion of the extra credit. To me, you have to have a range of how much extra credit they get, or else they can be too strongly rewarded for doing a totally crappy job.
ReplyDeleteI'll often give points on a quiz (10 or 20 depending on how much work the EC is). If it's a major undertaking, I might give a point on the final grade.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty big, I'll give them two points of the final grade. I was at the event yesterday, and only 1/4 of the class bothered to show up. It's not going to skew my final grades significantly
ReplyDeleteI now do it as points to the final exam, although this assignment would be fine for points to the final grade. The reason I do it to the final exam is that those grades are often lower than I'd like.
ReplyDelete