Figure 1.

Example of a “tiered” grading scheme which re-warded activities from several categories. All of the activities within a tier had similar expectations for time spent engaging with the material, and similar expectations for satisfactory completion. This scheme has a variety of activities from which students may choose; the point structure can be varied to emphasize parts of the class that best align with course objectives. Activities marked with a star (✯) were limited to one instance per week, are due on a weekly basis to avoid a flood of last-minute papers at the end of the semester. For the class shown, final grades were calculated based on the percentage of points achieved out of 1000, even though students could achieve a maximum of 1205 points. See text for activity descriptions.