Scaling marks distribution of underperformed assessments to avoid higher failure rates

Abstract

Scaling assessment marks of underperformed assessments provide a temporary solution for unforeseen anomalies in student‟s letter grade distributions of a course unit. In this work, a model of linear mapping is employed to scale the marks of an underperformed assessment of a course unit. The mapping process is based on shifting the average of raw marks to an expected average. It is demonstrated that the effect of such a scaling process on higher GPA value letter grades (A, A+) are minimal. It is confirmed that the shifting of letter grades is only short range in the middle and lower letter grades. The increment of the number of lower and middle range letter grades is mainly due to satisfying the condition on passing the continuous assessment. The imposed condition on passing the continuous assessment is to obtain 50% marks from the continuous assessment components of the course unit. Further, this analysis suggests having a minimum of class average of 60% marks for each component of continuous assessments is sufficient to achieve a reasonable number of passing grades for a course unit.