Understanding Automatic Grade Weighting (Renormalization)

What's New? A Smarter, Fairer Gradebook 📈

We're excited to introduce a powerful update to our gradebook: automatic grade weighting. This feature is designed to provide a more accurate, real-time picture of student performance by intelligently handling weighted categories that haven't been used yet.

The Problem This Solves:

Previously, if your gradebook was set up with weighted categories (e.g., Tests 50%, Quizzes 30%, Assignments 20%), a student's average could appear artificially low if no grades had been entered for a large-weight category like "Tests."

The Solution:

The gradebook is now smart enough to detect which components are actively being used. It will automatically ignore any category without grades and recalculate (or re-normalize) the weights based only on the work that has been completed.

How It Works: An Example

Let's imagine a course with three weighted components:

• Tests: 50%
• Quizzes: 30%
• Assignments: 20%

It's mid-term, and the teacher has entered several grades for Quizzes and Assignments, but no tests have been given yet.

The New Way (With Automatic Weighting) 👍

1. The system scans the gradebook. It sees that grades for Quizzes and Assignments have been posted to history, but no grades for "Tests" have been posted yet.
2. It temporarily removes the 50% weight from "Tests," making the new "total" 50% (from Quizzes 30% + Assignments 20%).
3. It then recalculates the weights proportionally:
   • Quizzes become 60% of the grade (30% / 50%).
   • Assignments become 40% of the grade (20% / 50%).

The student's average is now calculated based on these new weights, giving a true and accurate grade based on the work completed to date.

How Renormalization is Automatically Applied (What Teachers Need to Know)

This new feature is now fully automatic and makes managing your gradebook even simpler.

You no longer need to delete empty columns to make this work. The system is smart enough to know the difference between an empty column (waiting for grades) and a component that hasn't been started yet.

Here is the simple rule the system follows:

• As long as no grades for a component (e.g., "Tests") have been posted to the cumulative history, the system will automatically re-normalize the weights. You can create your "Test 1" column in advance, and as long as you haven't posted any scores from it, it will not negatively affect student averages.
• The moment you post the first grade for that component to history (e.g., you submit your "Test 1" scores), the system "locks in" that component. From that point forward, it will use the original, full weight (e.g., 50%) for the rest of the term.