First, the list of graded items should be diverse.
Students learn in different ways and differ in how they best show what they know.
Course grading systems that rely solely on one or two exams, be they
multiple—choice or essay, penalize students who are better able to show their abilities in other ways.
Second, the list of graded items should reflect as much as possible the full range of learning goals and learning activities.
If you want students to learn how to apply the content and how to integrate it
with other realms of knowledge, they should receive course grade credit for showing they have learned how to do that.
Not all learning activities needed to be graded, but if you really want students
to engage in a particular learning activity, say, writing weekly journals, that needs to be reflected somehow in the course grade.
Finally, the relative weight of each item on the course grade should reflect the relative importance of that activity Presumably all graded items are important, but some are more important than others.
For example, a culminating project that involves all the major realms of learning in the course is more important than a weekly quiz. II‘ so, this should be reflected in the relative weights of the items in the course grading system.
To show what a grading system might look like that incorporates these recommendations, Exhibit