This article is intended for Instructors.

Badges and Points that students earn throughout the Accounting Cycle Simulation can be used by instructors to grade students, as well as check on their progress and get an understanding of areas where students may need more assistance.

The easiest way to obtain the point scores and badge information of your students is to generate a report with this information. See the Report Generator for more information.

There are a number of ways instructors can grade students in this simulation. Instructors can also use the information for each participant to clearly see participants that are struggling and then can act accordingly. Here are some suggested methods:

Points Only - Highest Score Highest Grade

Using solely the points, the instructor can decide to grade based simply on the highest scorer getting the highest grade. 
For example, there are 20 participants doing the Simulation and the maximum grade is 10%. The top scorer earned 5000 points so they get 10% and everyone else gets a grade based on this calculation:
Student's Score/5000 * 10%

Points Only - Quartile Grading

Dividing the points into quartiles is another way instructors can grade. This way also allows multiple students to obtain the highest grade, if their point score is in the 4th Quartile.
For example, the maximum grade is 10% :

• A point score in the 4th Quartile = 10% (100% of total possible score)
• A point score in the 3rd Quartile = 7.5% (75% of total possible score)
• A point score in the 2nd Quartile = 5% (50% of total possible score)
• A point score in the 1st Quartile = 2.5% (25% of total possible score)
• No points scored = 0% (0% of total possible score)

To calculate the quartiles of all the points scored.

1. Order your student's point scores from lowest to highest values
2. Find the median. This is the second quartile Q2.
3. At Q2 split the ordered data set into two halves.
4. The lower quartile Q1 is the median of the lower half of the data.
5. The upper quartile Q3 is the median of the upper half of the data.

Badges Only - Quantity is King

This method simply looks at assigning a grade based on obtaining a certain amount of badges by a participant (in a certain badge category or a mixture).  This method can be useful if grading is based less on a simple performance, but also on knowledge obtained or examples of excellence in the simulation.

For example, there are 20 participants doing the Simulation and the maximum grade is 10%. The participant with the top badge count for Badges of Knowledge category and Badges of Performance earned 20 badges. If there were a maximum amount of 28 badges possible in these categories, then a score breakdown could look like this:

28*90% = 25 = A grade of 9%

28*80% = 22 = A grade of 8%

28*70% = 20 = A grade of 7%

So, this participant would get a grade of 7% out of 10%.

Badges and Points - A Deeper Insight

Using a mixture of the above point and badge grading methods, this method is more complex, but it allows for greater analyze of the participant's understanding of the tasks and concepts in the accounting simulation.

An example of how this can be done is if the total possible grade is 10%, then 5% goes towards points and another 5% goes towards badges.

Identifying Participants Who May Need More Help

This simulation is proactive in its approach to identifying participants who are finding the tasks very difficult. By clicking on the magnifying glass button next to a participant's name in the list of participants section within the instructor portal, instructors can get greater insight into points scored by that participant for each source document and the general ledger entries from journals. If poor scores are noticed, then instructors can use this information to discuss with the student and help them work on areas that they might be finding difficult to grasp.