Merge pull request #771 from MITx/feature/bridger/course_grading

Added doc explaining course grading at high level.

doc/course_grading.md

+# Course Grading
+
+This document is written to help professors understand how a final grade for a
+course is computed.
+
+Course grading is the process of taking all of the problems scores for a student
+in a course and generating a final score (and corresponding letter grade). This 
+grading process can be split into two phases - totaling sections and section 
+weighting.
+
+## Totaling sections
+
+The process of totaling sections is to get a percentage score for every section
+in the course. A section is any module that is a direct child of a chapter. For
+example, psets, labs, and sequences are all common sections. Only the
+*percentage* on the section will be available to compute the final grade, *not*
+the final number of points earned / possible.
+
+**For a section to be included in the final grade, the policies file must set
+graded = True for the section.**
+
+For each section, the grading function retrieves all problems within the
+section. The section percentage is computed as (total points earned) / (total
+points possible).
+
+
+### Weighting Problems
+In some cases, one might want to give weights to problems within a section. For
+example, a final exam might contain 4 questions each worth 1 point by default.
+This means each question would by default have the same weight. If one wanted
+the first problem to be worth 50% of the final exam, the policy file could specify
+weights of 30, 10, 10, and 10 to the 4 problems, respectively.
+
+Note that the default weight of a problem **is not 1.** The default weight of a
+problem is the module's max_grade.
+
+## Section Weighting
+
+Once each section has a percentage score, we must total those sections into a
+final grade. Of course, not every section has equal weight in the final grade.
+The policies for weighting sections into a final grade are specified in the
+grading_policy.json file.
+
+The grading_policy.json file specifies several sub-graders that are each given
+a weight and factored into the final grade. There are currently two types of
+sub-graders, section format graders and single section graders.
+
+We will use this simple example of a grader with one section format grader and
+one single section grader.
+
+
+    "GRADER" : [
+        {
+          "type" : "Homework",
+          "min_count" : 12,
+          "drop_count" : 2,
+          "short_label" : "HW",
+          "weight" : 0.4
+        },
+        {
+          "type" : "Final",
+          "name" : "Final Exam",
+          "short_label" : "Final",
+          "weight" : 0.6
+        }
+    ]
+
+### Section Format Graders
+
+A section format grader grades a set of sections with the same format, as
+defined in the course policy file. To make a vertical named Homework1 be graded
+by the Homework section format grader, the following definition would be in the
+course policy file.
+
+
+    "vertical/Homework1": {
+        "display_name": "Homework 1", 
+        "graded": true, 
+        "format": "Homework"
+    },
+
+
+In the example above, the section format grader declares that it will expect to
+find at least 12 sections with the format "Homework". It will drop the lowest 2.
+All of the homework assignments will have equal weight, relative to each other 
+(except, of course, for the assignments that are dropped).
+
+This format supports forecasting the number of homework assignments. For
+example, if the course only has 3 homeworks written, but the section format
+grader has been told to expect 12, the missing 9 will have an assumed 0% and
+will still show up in the grade breakdown.
+
+
+### Single Section Graders
+
+A single section grader grades exactly that - a single section. If a section
+is found with a matching format and display name then the score of that section
+is used. If not, a score of 0% is assumed.
+
+
+### Combining sub-graders
+
+The final grade is computed by taking the score and weight of each sub grader.
+In the above example, homework will be 40% of the final grade. The final exam
+will be 60% of the final grade.
+
+## Displaying the final grade
+
+The final grade is then rounded up to the nearest percentage point. This is so
+the system can consistently display a percentage without worrying whether the
+displayed percentage has been rounded up or down (potentially misleading the
+student). The formula for the rounding is
+
+    rounded_percent = round(computed_percent * 100 + 0.05) / 100
+
+The grading policy file also specifies the cutoffs for the grade levels. A
+grade is either A, B, or C. If the student does not reach the cutoff threshold
+for a C grade then the student has not earned a grade and will not be eligible
+for a certificate. Letter grades are only awarded to students who have
+completed the course. There is no notion of a failing letter grade.
+
+
+
+