Award Calculation in mixed grading conventions

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE CALCULATION OF GPA WHERE MIXED GRADING CONVENTIONS ARE USED

 

Lecturers from January 2011 return grades in percentage format only. In most cases, all results in the award year will be in percentage format and the calculation of the award results will be purely a numeric calculation. In some cases, however, where a student has module attempts from a previous year or years, an award will be determined based on a mix of grades, some Alpha (that is, A, B+, B, C etc), some Numeric. In these cases, Alpha grades previously awarded will—for the purposes of arriving at the calculation only—be converted into numeric equivalents according to the table below.  

 

Table 1: Alpha Grade Conversion Equivalents

 

A	80
B+	70
B	60
B-	55
C+	50
C	40
D	35
F	0

 

 

The converted grades are then used in conjunction with more recently awarded percentage marks to arrive at the award overall average.

 

No student will be disadvantaged in the conversion process.

 

To ensure that there is no disadvantage, the Institute will verify the overall average through a parallelcalculation that will convert the numeric marks to their equivalent Alpha grades and then calculate a GPA and overall award based on the GPA equivalent of each alpha grade in Table 2 below. In other words, this will calculate the GPA as if all the grades had been entered as Alpha grades. This check figure will be available to examination boards for verification purposes.

 

 

Table 2: Conversion Table, Numeric to Alpha

 

Percentage Grade	Alpha Grade	Conversion Score
80-100	A	4
70-79	B+	3.5
60-69	B	3
55-59	B-	2.75
50-54	C+	2.5
40-49	C	2
35-39	D	1.5
0-34	F	0

 

 

 

This approach has been approved by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC).

EXAMPLE

 

Results according to mixed grading scheme (Alpha and Numeric):

 

Initial Grades Grades after conversion D 35 B+ 70 C 40 B- 55 B 60 B 60 B 60 61 61 60 60 54 54 60 60 64 64     Average: 56.6  Overall Award: 2:2

Check calculation: (i)                    Numeric grades converted to Alpha equivalent (ii)                  Alpha grades assigned numeric equivalent based on conversion table (iii)                 Grade calculated   Grades using Alpha Numeric equivalents of alpha grades D 1.5 B+ 3.5 C 2 B- 2.75 B 3 B 3 B 3 B (61) 3 B (60) 3 C+ (54) 2.5 B (60) 3 B (64) 3

GPA if numeric converted to alpha: 2.8 Overall Award: 2:2