You determine your grade for this course by fulfilling a contract that spells out in advance the requirements as well as the penalties for not fulfilling the terms of your contract.   You decide which (and how many) assignments you will contract to complete. For each assignment (or element of an assignment) you will receive one of three possible evaluations: Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, or Excellent.

The advantage of this method of grading is that you, the student, decide how much work you wish to do this semester. If you complete that work on time and satisfactorily, you will receive the grade for which you contracted.  This means planning ahead, thinking about all of your obligations and responsibilities this semester and also determining what grade you want or need in this course.  If you complete the work you contracted for, you get the grade. Done. I respect the student who only needs a C, who has other obligations that preclude doing all of the requirements to earn an A in the course, and who contracts for the C and carries out the contract perfectly.

On January 7 (our second class session), each student will sign, with a classmate as a witness, a contract for a grade.  I will countersign and we will each keep a copy of your contract.

Again, there are only three grades for any assignment.  Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, or Excellent.  Satisfactory is full credit.  Unsatisfactory (poor quality, late, or not submitted) is no credit.  Excellent means that you have significantly exceeded expectations for that assignment. Note: I do not expect to be giving out many “Excellent” evaluations; Excellent is the equivalent of a high A or A+.

If you fail to do a contracted assignment, or if you work is not satisfactory, you will receive the grade penalty spelled out in the contract.  But in certain cases, an “Excellent” grade may compensate for an unsatisfactory one; it will not, however, compensate for work that is not submitted. The goal is for everyone to produce satisfactory work, and to achieve the grade for which they have contracted.

For full details, see the grading contract.

Grades:

For our purposes, I propose the following translation between letter grades and percentages:

A = 88
A- = 83
B+ = 78
B = 74
B- = 70
C+ = 66
C = 62
C- = 58