Hi,

You can also use the vlookup function to check a table of grades.

Mel King
SUNY Cortland, NY
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Bartel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, December 06, 2002 3:19 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences
Subject: Re: Grading programs (was: New teacher)


On 5 Dec 2002 at 13:42, Maxwell Gwynn wrote:

> I find it quite easy in Excel to compute overall grades (in percentages,
> which I convert by hand to letter grades) and listings which I can post on
> my door for students to see. I can sort by name or ID number, and

Why go through the trouble of converting them yourself?  Just have Excel do
it
for you.  Here's one way to do it:
=IF(AB4>=89.5,"A",IF(AB4>=79.5,"B",IF(AB4>=69.5,"C",IF(AB4>=59.5,"D","F"
))))

Here, my percentage grade was in column AB (row 4)       and the formula was in
column AC.  In column AC, it will tell me what letter grade is associated
with
the percentage.  (I know, it's not exactly difficult to do this yourself,
but it's still
faster to put this formula in once and copy it for all students than to
manually
put the grade in; less chance of an error, too.)

I think that there may be a problem with this if you're using the +/-
system, as I
seem to remember Excel having a maximum number of if/then arguments it
will allow.

By the way, a neat spreadsheet trick is to use a row that includes the
maximum point value for each assignment, basically a "dummy student"
(insert your own snide comment here, I'll refrain) with a perfect score.
That
"student's" score is then summed in the same column as everyone else's.
Then, you set up your "percentage column" so that it divides each student's
total number of points by the (automatically calculated) maximum number of
points.  That means you don't have to keep changing your formulas every time
you grade a new assignment; you only need to add the point value for the
assignment.

Of course this only works if you set up your spreadsheet at the beginning of
the semester with all of your possible assignments having their own columns.
You can insert additional assignments later, but then you'll have to change
the
formulas (because the formula used to calculate the sum of each student's
scores won't take the inserted column into account)..

Jeff

--
Jeffrey Bartel
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Shippensburg University
[EMAIL PROTECTED] / 717.477.1324

---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]


---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to