The Crusades: Assessment of Assigned work

Papers: The papers, whether individual or group papers, will be assigned a numeric grade corresponding to a letter grade (A range = 90-100, B range = 80-89, C range = 70-79, D range = 60-69, F < 60). A grading rubric will be used in assessing these essays. Each of the two group assignments will be associated with a wiki. Wikis will be ungraded; however, students who do not contribute to the wiki will not be awarded credit for the group papers, even if they contribute to the discussions based on the wikis. When a student dissents from the second group paper, the student's dissent will be taken into account in his or her grade.

In-class assignments. These assignments will be worth one or two points. For the group assignments, all members of the group will receive the same number of points for the assignments. These will be cumulatively assigned a grade based on the percentage of possible points an individual has received, with a 5% upward adjustment.

Class participation. Students in the learning groups will collectively assign the class participation grade. Each student will receive 100 points to divide among the members of the group (including him or herself) based on the contributions of each individual. No student may award himself or herself more than 30 points, however. Each student will receive a grading rubric to help him or her decide how to assign the points. The points assigned by each individual will be added up to determine the participation grade for each grading period. There will be three grading periods for participation, the first and second worth 10% of the total grade each, the last worth 15%. A student who fails to submit participation grades for the group will receive a participation grade of "0" for that grading period and the points for the other group members will be adjusted proportionally.