The course is basically impossible to fail as long as you attempt the work and pass the final. The finals are pretty much identical each semester. However, the flip side of this coupled with the ridiculous marking scheme (see below) means that achieving a 7 is practically impossible. In this course if you want a 7 you will have to go extremely well, and if you get below a 5 you deserved a 2.
The marks for everything are out of 7 (why???) and your mark is rounded to the nearest whole number. this means for calculating your final grade, there would be no overall difference between 5.5/7 and 6.4/7 (79% and 92%) which both round to a 6/7.
Your final grade is made by calculating the weighted average of each rounded mark (this is probably too complicated for you to follow if you are reading this for the first time... but it gets better).
All this means that to get a 7 for the course you need to get a weighted average after rounding of over 6.5/7 ( 93%). and effectively your marks for individual assesment can range by 30% without any difference being made.
This is highlighted by Conscidering the 2 following students:
STUDENT A:
project 1......(worth 20%) = 6.4/7 (91.5%)........... Rounds to 6/7
poster......... (worth 10%) = 6.4/7 (91.5%).......... Rounds to 6/7
Report 2 .....(worth 40%) = 6.4/7 (92.5%)........... Rounds to 6/7
Final exam.. (worth 30%) = 100%................ .......7
FINAL GRADE = 6*20% + 6*10% + 6*40% + 6*40% +7*30% = 6.3... which rounds down to a 6 for the course
(normal percent based grade = 94.05% which is a VERY comfortable 7)
STUDENT B:
project 1......(worth 20%) = 5.5/7 (78.5%)........... Rounds to 6/7
poster......... (worth 10%) = 5.5/7 (78.5%).......... Rounds to 6/7
Report 2 .....(worth 40%) = 5.5/7 (78.5%)........... Rounds to 6/7
Final exam.. (worth 30%) = 56%................ .......Rounds up to 5
FINAL GRADE = 6*20% + 6*10% + 6*40% + 6*40% + 5*30% = 5.7... which rounds up to a 6 for the course
(normal percent based grade = 71.75% which should be a 5)
What is worse is that a PAF is assigned to everyone's mark and student A and B could have been in the same group and gotten the same raw mark of 5.8/7 with the good student scaling up to 6.4/7 (as the scaling factor is capped at 1.1) while the bad student scaled down due to doing nowhere near enough work) and ended up with the same grade of a distinction in the course... when student A did all the work and got 100% on the final while studen B JUST passed the final and did nothing.
