Sometimes you get to the end of the semester, and after calculating the final grades for a class, you find a student has gotten a passing grade when you don't think they should pass. You don't believe they have the skills and/or performance to move to the next level, but at this point in the semester it's too late to change anything.
So why does this happen? One reason could be from dividing up the grade percentages (That 100% of possible points totaling the final course grade) in a way that gives too many points to easier-types of assessments or perhaps allows a student to pass merely by taking a handful of exams while skipping most of the coursework. ...Setting good grade percentages in your syllabus can help with this problem, but how you do your day-to-day grading on assessments throughout the semester is equally, if not more, important. You could be grading too easily (or even too harshly) and not realize it until it's too late to change the final results. To help guide you in your day-to-day grading of assessments, I'd also suggest that you start checking their grade periodically from mid-term (every couple weeks) so you will know if someone is passing who shouldn't be (or vice versa). Then you can adjust your scoring to reach more accurate results. You can do this in Canvas or other grading websites, through Excel, or just do it the old fashioned way with pen, paper and a calculator.
Learning to assess students accurately is something that takes time and experimenting to get the right mix on your syllabus percentages as well as refining your daily grading of coursework and quizzes along with rubrics and how you interpret them/use them to assess students. You'll get there if you focus your attention on those things. In the meantime, check out some
sample syllabi for different courses to see how other teachers have broken down their grade percentages.
