Grading

This topic is a source of such anxiety for some that I want to be clear about my approach to grading and how it works in this course. So, first an editorial, then the nuts and bolts.

I'm very interested in your feedback about grading issues. Please feel free to email me, talk to me, or slip anonymous notes into my mailbox if you have comments, concerns, criticisms, or suggestions.

Editorial

This course is an opportunity for you to:

• develop basic GIS and spatial analysis skills using geologic data and examples
• extend your awareness of quantitative and computational approaches to solving problems
• broaden your exposure to topics and problems in the geosciences
• improve your critical thinking skills
• learn new applications and tools
• have some fun (requires geeky humor and ability to laugh when system is "uncooperative")

These things can improve your ability to solve problems in other courses or research, and may help you to qualify for interesting, rewarding jobs. There are other opportunities as well:

• use the course, lab resources, and my knowledge and experience as a springboard into more advanced areas of GIS not covered in the course
• gain experience working with others, managing and creating projects
• establish a reputation with me (good for future references) and your fellow students (just plain good) as a capable GIS analyst and problem-solver

I am here to help in whatever way possible with all of the above; it's your job to take advantage of these opportunities as best you can. The only "grade" that really matters in the long run is how well you learn, retain, and apply the material covered in this course to future pursuits.

Nonetheless, there are reasons why I will assess your overall performance and learning and assign you a letter grade for the course:

• you deserve feedback on how well I think you are doing, and a grade is a concise and relatively well understood way to encapsulate that feedback in a way that my comments on your work may not
• others may need some measure of how well I think you have done in developing the skills covered in the course
• grades provide an incentive to wrestle in earnest with new and challenging material

Nuts and bolts

What the grades mean

Obviously grading for a GRADUATE course like this cannot be entirely objective; assessment of your work on lab exercises will necessarily involve my (subjective) opinion of several aspects of your work: organization, clarity of presentation, completeness, appropriateness and conciseness of solution, etc. For the lab exercises, and for the course in general, here's what the basic letter grades mean (i.e., this is what I mean when I assign them):

A	work is top-notch in every way, and goes beyond what was asked for in some substantial way - synthesis, additional analysis, compelling presentation, etc.
B+	work is solid, complete, correct, well presented - adequate in every way for what was assigned
B	work is barely adequate - some gaps or errors, some rough spots; definite room for improvement
C	work is significantly inadequate in some way - major gap(s), serious errors, really poor presentation, etc
D	work not done at all, or barely so (I haven't had to assign any of these yet, and hope to keep it that way!)

To me, this approach gives everyone the opportunity to get an A in the course, if they have the desire and put in the time and effort. I think it creates about as level a playing field as possible given the prior experience of the students in this course. You'll also note that, while I value highly correct answers and information, there will often be more than one right answer and certainly more than one way to get there on the exercises, so I emphasize clarity, communication, completeness, process, and effort more than correctness in my assessment of your work.

I think this grading scheme is consistent with the idea many graduate students have that they must get A's in all their courses: in my opinion, graduate work is all about developing the ability to do independent work, to become a specialist, to routinely perform at a high level in all aspects of research and presentation, and that kind of work will earn an A in this course.

Finally, a note about computer-based courses and grading. I realize that not everyone comes into this course with the same background in computers. Some of you will be able to dive right into these assignments; others will require a fair amount of time to get up to speed on how to do basic tasks. Because of this discrepancy in backgrounds, my grading is somewhat subjective based on your level of computer experience. I see the final grade that you receive in this course will most strongly depend on the individual progress that you make as a student. If you start off getting C’s & B’s on assignments and then end up with mostly A’s towards the end, you’ll get an A in the course. The opposite holds true (I hope NONE of you regress).

Revisions

An important part of solidifying skills and producing high quality work is responding to feedback, in this case both from other students and from me. I encourage and reward revision of work, so I will accept and re-evaluate rewrites of exercises up to two weeks after I return them to you.

What you'll be graded on

There are three parts to your overall grade in the course:

• Exercises - each student will receive an individual grade for each exercise; the grade will be based on my evaluation of the write-up and maps turned in each week.
• Project - final projects will be graded based on the final writeup
• Mid-term- I need to make sure that you have learned (memorized?) the basic concepts of file formats, projections, databases, etc. before moving onto more detailed concepts

Here's how grades will be weighted to compute a final overall grade for the course:

Labs	50%
Project	25%
Midterm	25%

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