Grading Procedure

Grading for Policy Design and Implementation in Developing Countries will be done in the following steps.

1. Attendance (0-50): for each student and for each class meeting, (i) full attendance, (ii) partial attendance (late arrival, etc.), (iii) absence with prior notice, and (iv) absence without prior notice (not permitted except in sudden emergency), will be automatically recorded. Each student will receive points reflecting their attendance. We expect your full attendance unless an emergency or a sudden and unavoidable duty arises.

2. Active participation (0-50): instructors will automatically and continuously rate and record the performance of each student in every class. Performance here means the quality of your discussion. Good intervention, not necessarily long one, will be positively evaluated. For each student, scores are averaged for all sessions.

3. Slide presentation (-50 to +50): instructors will rate the performance of students who do slide presentation on their policy knowledge and experience on a scale ranging from -50 to +50, and the average score of two instructors will be recorded for each presenter. Students who do not do slide presentation are given 0 point. Negative points for slide presentation are theoretically possible if performance is very bad, but they occur only in rare cases.

4. The above three scores are normalized (having same standard deviation) and added with equal weights for each student.

5. The final score is used to determine your letter grades according to the GRIPS grading rule. This means, for example, no more than half of the class will receive "A" even if all perform well.

GRIPS rule for letter grades (for your information)

  - A, B, C, D (pass), E (fail), W (withdrawal).
  - For each class, the grade point average (GPA) should be in the range of 3.1-3.5 (A:4, B:3, C:2, D:1, E:0).
  - For each class, distribution should be: A (20-50%), B (30-70%), C (<25%), D (<10%), E (<10%).