Creating a grade sheet using Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool for creating a grade sheet to track your students’ grades. It organizes data in rows and columns and uses formulas and functions which make the grading process and computations simpler and faster. Mastering Microsoft Excel can help you cut the time you spend in computing scores of your students and creating grade sheets.
Microsoft Excel Basics
Entering formulas
Formulas allow you to make calculations based on the data you entered into a spreadsheet. They are made up of a combination of numbers, cell references, and mathematical operators (+,-, *, /). To input a formula, click once on the cell and enter your formula in the formula bar.
All formulas must begin with the equal sign. You can also use parentheses to organize your formulas.
Setting up your grade sheet
After reviewing your formulas, you can now begin with your grade sheet. List all the assignments, tests, and activities you will have for your class, including the individual point values per activity and the overall weight percentage of each activity.
Make a separate table that outlines the initial grading curve for the course. Readjusting this curve later on will automatically adjust the scores. For calculating the final grades, create a reporting table to contain all your students’ names in the rows and the class activities in the column heads.
Adding information
Once the grade sheet is set up, you can enter the assignments, their points and overall weights (in decimal format or percentage) into your grade sheet. For example, you can give Quiz 1 a weight of 10% (or 0.10), or Quiz 3 a weight of 2% (or 0.02). You can assign whatever point value for each activity, as long as they add up to 100% (or 1.0).
After the activities are in the grade sheet, you can enter the grade curve in the same worksheet. The grade curve on a standard ninety, eight, seventy, sixty basis will be used to calculate the final grades in the course.
Once the grade curve is done, you can fill up the reporting table with student names, ID numbers, and individual scores on assignments, tests, and activities.
For calculating the final grades of your students, you should enter a formula to calculate the scores that will result to percentage terms. Be careful in creating the formula to avoid hassle and delays. Manually calculate the final grade of one student to check the validity of the formula you created to be sure.
For more tutorials and information on using Microsoft Excel for creating grade sheets, visit the following sites:
Tutorial Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel Basic
An Introduction to Microsoft Excel
Tutorial Introduction Microsoft Office Excel 2003
Using Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Exam Guide
Sources:
“Creating a grade sheet with Microsoft Excel.” Retrieved June 9, 2010 from
http://www.pdf-word.net/tutorial-microsoft-excel/creating-a-grade-sheet-with-microsoft-excel.html
“Excel Tutorials.” Retrieved June 9, 2010 from
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tat/Docs/excel.pdf
Svinicki, M.D. “Helping Students Understand Grades.” Retrieved June 9, 2010 from
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/rubrics/teaching-methods/6340.html
(Published 26 July 2010, Smart Communications, Inc.)
