Attendance Mark

Rosita

A bit of a discussion cropped up on this matter when I was in company today and I was wondering if anyone could enlighten me.

If there is 10 per cent of the marks on a module going for attendance and you have full attendance do you get the full 10 per cent or do you just get the maximum GPA of 4.2 (calculation point 78.33) for that aspect of the grading which in effect stops the mark at 7.8 per cent?

Pandoras Twist

Depends on how the lecturer puts it into sis as far as I'm aware.

I've gotten 90% for attendance though so I would say the norm is to just add on the % to whatever the grade is after CA/Exam result

Rosita

Pandoras Twist wrote: »

Depends on how the lecturer puts it into sis as far as I'm aware.

I've gotten 90% for attendance though so I would say the norm is to just add on the % to whatever the grade is after CA/Exam result

Was that 90 per cent based on 100 per cent attendance or 90 per cent attendance?

Obviously it is added on to the result but I'm wondering if you have full attendance and there's 10 per cent going for full attendance is the entire 10 per cent added on? It really is quite significant potentially in terms of grades.

I have to say I have never seen or known what my separate mark for attendance actually was in my own time.

Pandoras Twist

I've gotten 90% of 10% so rather than getting an A grade in my attendance and getting 7.whatever%, I got the 9%

If you click into your exam results it usually shows you the break down of your exam result and CA grades.

Rosita

Pandoras Twist wrote: »

I've gotten 90% of 10% so rather than getting an A grade in my attendance and getting 7.whatever%, I got the 9%

If you click into your exam results it usually shows you the break down of your exam result and CA grades.

Sorry, when you got 90 per cent had you attended 100 per cent of the time or 90 per cent of the time? Did the mark reflectly precisely your attendance?

WeeBushy

I would imagine you are given the full 10%.

Its the same idea as if you were doing a maths exam (simplest analogy) and got everything 100% correct. You would be given the full 10%, not 7.8%.

Rosita

I notice on drilling down through the results that a grade is given for attendance (as for the exams and CA) which implies that someone with full attendance could get a maximum of an A+ grade which is calculated at 78.33 per cent rather than 100 per cent.

muboop1

It really depends on what the lecturer decides. I've had lecturers do both to me over the years!

Pandoras Twist

Rosita wrote: »

Sorry, when you got 90 per cent had you attended 100 per cent of the time or 90 per cent of the time? Did the mark reflectly precisely your attendance?

I attended 90% of the time, and was awarded 90% attendance

If in doubt, ask your lecturer.

dyl10

I would imagine that generally, everything is counted in % up until the final GPA calculation.

Rosita

dyl10 wrote: »

I would imagine that generally, everything is counted in % up until the final GPA calculation.

The only difficulty with this is that marks for assignments (in my experience anyway) are given in grades not percentages. This means that for calculation purposes there is one mark only per grade so that assigments which previously could have been differentiated by over three per cent are now potentially the same mark. For example a 'B' grade/mark ranges from 63.33% to 66.66% with the calculation point at 65, so the provision of a grade rather than a percentage at assignment stage suggests that what you are thinking is not the case. In fact I would presume that lecturers probably do not operate on percentages at all but use grade descriptors to arrive at a conclusion.

But if the attendance mark is capped at the highest GPA of 4.2 (calculation point 78.33) this means that a student with 100 per cent attendance is getting just 7.8 per cent of the marks from that potential 10 per cent. Though as the poster who got 90 per cent for attendance implies this might be otherwise - but I cannot see that level of detail (percentage) on my results. I got a grade not a percentage. What grade does one get for 90%? According to the information regarding GPA and grade calculation anything between 76.67 per cent and 100 per cent is calculated at 78.33.

I find the 'it depends on the lecturer' idea very unsatisfactory because there is potentially two or three per cent up for grabs in such a case and that is way too much for it to be so unclear or up to an individual. It's bad enough having a lecturer in one module criticise an assignment for having headings (rather than weaving the 'heading' into the narrative) while another lecturer criticises another assignment for not having them!

I can live with inconsistencies coming from lecturers' idiosyncrasies because I have little choice, but I would definitely like to get clarity on the attendance. And it is unclear - for example on one module I'm doing it says 10 per cent goes for 'seminar attendance' while another states that this 10 per cent is for 'continuous assessment' which is a little vaguer.

Perhaps there is the possibility that they are deliberately vague on this so that if they feel someone deserves to be shunted to a higher grade they have some leeway to do so. But if everything is being graded and has pre-determined single calculation point it is hard to see how that can later decide that a marginal grade can go upwards. I mean you're either on (for example) 3.67 or 3.68 depending on the overall calculation and there seems no room for manouvere as far as I can see.

P.S. I just checked the module descriptor for one of the modules and it states unambiguously that you get 1 per cent for every seminar you attend (there are ten of them). The only difficulty is squaring full attendance with the provision of a grade which has a calculation point of 100 per cent - and there isn't one. Dyl 10's view that everything might be a percentage until the final GPA stage makes a lot of sense except - to repeat the earlier point - that grades are provided invidividually for each assessed portion of the module so this could not really be the case.

WeeBushy

I think if you want to know that much you should go to your lecturer or the programme office and clarify with them.

EDIT: Sorry, that came across a bit narky. That's not how I meant it I just meant that they are the people who are most likely to be able to clarify it.

Rosita

WeeBushy wrote: »

I think if you want to know that much you should go to your lecturer or the programme office and clarify with them.

EDIT: Sorry, that came across a bit narky. That's not how I meant it I just meant that they are the people who are most likely to be able to clarify it.

No problem with that. I would say though that this is fairly critical to any student given that there would be a discrepancy of over 2 per cent between the highest grade award and getting the full attendance mark.

For anyone hovering near the borders of a grade the significance is huge. I will speak to the lecturers individually but it should be more generally transparent.

muffinman

For the law subjects with tutorials, it's an A+ for 100% attendance, i.e. 78.33 calculation point

Rosita

muffinman wrote: »

For the law subjects with tutorials, it's an A+ for 100% attendance, i.e. 78.33 calculation point

The more I think about this the more it makes sense. At this stage 100 per cent translates to 78.33 for everything else - why it should be different for attendance? Only thing is that someone here has gotten 90 per cent for 90 per cent attendance which challenges that idea.

Rosita

Just had a look at the school handbook and it confirms that attendance at 9/10 seminars/tutorials is an A+ grade, which can be interpreted only as meaning there is a calculation point of 78.33 rather than 90/100.