display median instead of mean

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Currently, "Score Details" displays the Mean, High, and Low grades for comparison to my student's grade. The median grade is a more meaningful comparison than mean. The mean grade can be strongly biased low, for example, if one student fails to turn in the assignment and gets a zero grade. In that example, most students will score above the mean. If my simply turns in her assignment, she scores above the mean, but I still don't know how that compares to the other students in the class.

However, by definition, half the students will score above the median, and half will score below, even in the above example. Then my student's grade compared to the median always indicates if she did better or worse than half the class. Therefore, I recommend reporting median rather mean grades for comparison.

David Marx

 

5 Comments
ctitmus
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
ctitmus
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni
Status changed to: Open
 
james_glenn
Community Member

My students are asking for medians to be reported for exactly the reasons listed by D. Marx.  It is a nuisance to export to a spreadsheet just to compute medians.

GangaAdhikari
Community Novice

As students, we can see the mean score but this is often times skewed due to one student not submitting the assignment. I would love to see this being replaced with a median score.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
Comments from Instructure

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