Galileo Speaking Grades

I have just posted the speaking portion of the grade for the Trial of Galileo game. As I mentioned earlier, students received 4 points for an amazing comment, 2 points for a comment that was expected to be given by their faction, 1 point for repeating someone's correct statement, and -2 points for completely incorrect comments that could have led to that student being burned at the stake. The highest raw score was 103 points; the lowest raw score was 0.

Since this distribution was by no means Gaussian (bell-shaped), I reviewed the scores and applied the following Excel formula to convert the raw score to a speaking grade:

=IF(RAW>0,MIN(LOG((RAW/3),2)*10+60,100),0)

What does this mean? Raw scores of 24 became grades of 90%, raw scores of 12 became 80%, raw scores of 6 became 70%, and raw scores of 3 became 60%. Raw scores of 48 or higher earned 100%. Raw scores of 0 (usually where the student said nothing during the game) became speaking grades of 0%.

After I grade the Galileo papers, I will combine them with the speaking grade three ways (75/25, 50/50, and 25/75) and award each student with the maximum of the three.

Great job speaking, folks! I'm looking forward to the Conclave to elect the Pope (and perhaps an Inquisition?) on Wednesday.