Benchmarking of Virginia Tech GPAs to Curtin University course-weighted averages

Lindsay, Euan; Goff, Richard

doi:10.1109/FIE.2009.5350580

131075_Benchmarking%20of%20Virgina%20Tech%20GPAs%20PID%20131075.pdf (235.5Kb)

Access Status

Open access

Authors

Lindsay, Euan

Goff, Richard

Date

2009

Type

Conference Paper

Metadata

Show full item record

Citation

Lindsay, Euan and Goff, Richard. 2009. Benchmarking of Virginia Tech GPAs to Curtin University course-weighted averages, in Froyd, J. (ed), The 39th Annual Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, Oct 18 2009, San Antonio, Texas-USA: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Source Title

FIE09: Imagining and Engineering Future CSET Education

Source Conference

The 39th Annual Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference

DOI

10.1109/FIE.2009.5350580

ISSN

01905848

Faculty

Faculty of Science and Engineering

Department of Mechanical Engineering

School of Civil and Mechanical Engineering

Remarks

The link to the Conference's home page is: http://fie-conference.org/fie2009/

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URI

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/47531

Collection

Curtin Research Publications

Abstract

Having a single numerical value to represent a student’s overall level of achievement is useful. At Curtin University of Technology, it is the Course Weighted Average (CWA) – an average of percentage grades received for each course. At Virginia Tech, it is the Grade Point Average (GPA) – an average of values based upon letter grades for courses (letters initially based upon percentage grades). To facilitate exchanges and/or transfers between U.S., Australian and other institutions, it is useful to benchmark the equivalency of GPAs to CWAs. The difficulty comes through the differences in which grade corresponds to which mark. At Virginia Tech, a mark of 71% earns a C-, which is a GPA of 1.7; below the 2.0 required for graduation. By contrast, at Curtin a CWA of 71% results in a degree with honors. This paper reports on a study of cohorts of freshman engineering students at each institution ranked by GPA and CWA, and comparisons drawn at equivalent percentile ranks within each cohort. This yielded an equation to convert GPA to CWA allowing comparable student achievement at the two universities to be evaluated and contributing greatly to facilitating exchanges and/or transfers between U.S. and Australian universities.