A new mastery-based grading approach for the laboratory and the homework will be introduced in Spring 2001. Experience from self-paced courses shows that if the material is organized into units that can be studied on a weekly basis and if there is a scheduled pace, then nearly every student in the class can achieve a grade of 80% or better on a weekly mastery test. This semester we will experiment by generalizing this approach to grading the laboratory and homework to emphasize learning and eliminate much of the busy work. 

The basic idea is to guarantee a grade of B- (80%) if on-time mastery at an 80% level of the material occurs on a regular basis each week. There will be a weekly check-offs for completing the homework (with 80% correct). There will be three weekly check-offs for laboratory. While laboratory work will be in two person teams these check-offs must be met individually by each student. They are 

1. Completing and showing (80% correct results) for the pre-laboratory to the TA just before the start of the laboratory, 
2. demonstrating correct 'hands on' use of laboratory equipment and measurement procedures to the TA each laboratory session, and 
3. Presenting notebook entries to the TA showing the test procedure, the data taken and a brief write-up of 80% of the essential observations and understanding from your experiment.

During the semester, two laboratories will be written-up to demonstrate mastery of a formal laboratory write-up standard. These two write-ups will be graded as satisfactory, above standard and well above standard through awarding up to 2 bonus points each.

Two laboratory quizzes and two homework quizzes will be used to verify mastery of the material. These quizzes will be, announced in advance and will contain only slight variations of the common core of material that every student in the class has been asked to master. A standard of 80% is a pass. Above standard (90%) or well above standard nearly (100%) will be recognized through awarding up to 2 bonus points on each quiz.

Work that is not mastered through meeting the 80% standard on schedule will be subject 1 (homework or laboratory item) homework or laboratory item penalty point penalty point per week of delay in completion.

The homework and laboratory grades will be normalized to 80% as shown in the equations below. This is to make them consistent with the examination scores which will each be normalized to an average of 80% and a standard deviation of 10%. 

HW = 80%+5%*(HW Quiz Bonus Points) - 2%*(HW Penalty Points)

LAB = 80%+5%*(LAB Quiz Bonus Points) - 1%*(Lab Item Penalty Points)

The normalized composite grade is 

Grade% = 0.05*HW+0.10*LAB+0.20*MID1+0.20*MID2+0.45*FINAL