I just had a super duper half baked idea for the user experience and branding of my first iPhone app, hitherto known as “Grades.” Just as I was about to log the idea away in my secret files, a ninja dashed into my room and took a picture with his iPhone. I am still a bit bewildered from the whole thing but I recently received an anonymous email with no subject, containing a single attachment: the image you see to the left.
Sorry about that. Really.
In all seriousness, though, I am considering theming and branding the app as “GradeGuide.” The name describes what the app does better than just, “Grades”. Plus, who can resist alliteration? I’ve got some exciting marketing ideas to go along with the theme. More on that later.
Tweet
[here via TapTapTap]
GradeGuide does sound better. I like your tagline–"find the path to the grade you want." (Okay, I'm a professor, not so sold on "easiest". Depending, it could be fun to toss in little tips—for instance, when students really need a B+ and have gotten a C on essays so far, show a "Nearly every college has a writing center that will help you polish essays for any class. Do you know where yours is?")
Random thoughts:
In my classes, students need a 94 to get a straight A, while a 93 is a more common breakpoint. Does your app account for shifting grade levels like that?
I know other professors who don't grade with numbers, but with letters. Does your app handle that? (I only see numbers in screenshots so far).
best of luck!
Very helpful input. Thanks!
I have to admit, there are at least two ways students could use the app. One, the use-case that prompted me to build it, assumes a student wants to make sure he gets an A and needs to know what grades he will need so that he can spend an the appropriate amount of time studying. The other use-case—one that I am not proud of but may inevitably draw more students—is the case where someone just wants to figure out the lowest grades he needs to snag by with a C.
I guess the question is, would professors potentially recommend my app to their students? If so, would including "easiest" turn a lot of professors off?
I think tips would be a great addition; thinking about how I could incorporate them.
Your thoughts about shifting grades and non-number grades are very valuable. I have been researching the various ways professors grade but I still don't quite understand every system. I would like to talk with you more about this as I think I still have a lot to learn.
A few questions off things off the bat:
1. Could you elaborate on your scoring system? What would my app need to include to accommodate it?
2. Right now my app is based on scores, not letters. Do all the professors that use letter grades use the same system? For example, is it always true that A = 90? A+ = 95? B = 80? etc.
Thanks for all your help. The trick is to make it easy to understand for the common cases yet accommodate the edge cases as well.
I don't know that there are that many app-store-surfing profs anyhow (though in general, mac use is proportionately higher than US market share with profs and I know a few others with iphones, though I'm on a very mac-friendly campus). And even me, who finds these things interesting, probably would not translate it into actual recommendations to students (maybe, in a casual conversation with a student who I *knew* had an iPod touch, but not wholesale as an announcement). So no worries about "easiest".
1) Probably your app would handle my scoring system fine–instead of having students say "I need an A, show me how to get there", let them put in "I need a 94, show me how to get there". This would also accomodate the many math/sci courses that often run on a bit of a curve. Some students will not be sure, and will need a "default scale" option. A second use for your app should be checking the grade the student thinks they earned against the grade that got posted (because that's the email profs get all the time). That may require being able to edit the goal without wiping out previously entered information.
2) for letters, the safest way to convert them to numbers is on the 4.0 system—it *should* be true that an A=4.0, A- =3.67, B+=3.33, just as with GPAs, and then you can average and weight those numbers behind the scenes, and apply some tough upward rounding (eg, needing a 3.4 requires getting an A-, not a B+). But I honestly don't know how professors who use letters do the calculations. I also don't know whether enough professors use letters that it would be worth your while. The letter-using profs are going to be in essay-writing fields—history, english, etc.
hope that helps.
Very helpful. Thanks!
By default scale option, I'm guessing you mean somehow communicating that 90 usually means an A, 80 usually means a B, etc. Is that correct?
The goal will always be editable without effecting anything but the calculations (it won't effect anything the student has already inputted).
I'll do a bit more research on the letter grades—thanks for the tip about using the 4.0 system.
If you have an iPhone, I would love to get you in on the beta so that you could try it for your self—you may have insights that student testers don't.