<p>So final grades come by and I received a D in one of my classes.</p>
<p>The Final Grade Component as shown in her Handout in the beginning of the Semester is shown as this:</p>
<p>Homework: 50%
Participation: 20%
xx assignment: 15%
xx Assignment: 15% </p>
<p>What is confusing to me is that she told me that my participation was what gave me a D?
She never warned me about poor grades until after the fact and critiqued me that my writing was poor. She says I've done all assignments except for three, which I clearly remember doing all of them!!</p>
<p>Do I have a chance to change my grades/ argue this?</p>
<p>Should I just move on? The class credits are a 1.5 class. I had two other classes this semester which were both 3 credits. I got As in both of them. I have a 3.4 GPA out of a 4.</p>
<p>A professor doesn’t have to tell you ahead of time that your participation was bad. 20% of the grade is pretty significant and so if you got a 0 there, then depending on your grading scale, perfect scores in everything else might have been a B- at best and so if you actually did B caliber work - which would not merit some sort of warning anyway, your overall grade (thanks to your awful participation grade) could easily be a D.</p>
<p>What were your actual scores on the assignments although odds are this is not unfair grading?</p>
<p>It’s not the professors responsibility to warn you about poor grades on anything or low participation scores. The only feedback students typically get is the grades on their assignments, and even then, those don’t always get handed back right away. If there’s a question about it, however, it’s typically the student’s responsibility to ask their professor for feedback on how they’re doing, not the other way around.</p>
<p>Receiving a really bad participation grade could have easily caused you to be bumped down from a C to a D.</p>
<p>Do you have any proof that you did and turned in the assignments she said you missed? Is there a possibility that you missed some assignments you didn’t know existed or that something was assigned that you thought you missed? Perhaps you could ask what assignments you were missing, since you remember turning in all of them. If having those three assignments would change you’re grade, then you might want to discuss it with your professor. Keep in mind that if the professor thinks your performance is sub-par, even if you do turn in the missing assignments, she may still grade them poorly.</p>
<p>Did you participate in class? Do you have reason to believe that you earned a higher participation grade than you were given? If so, you might also want to discuss this with your professor, as well.</p>
<p>Nothing about the grade sounds really unfair, unless she somehow lost three of your assignments. Even then, there’s no way of knowing how significantly that would affect your grade without knowing what your actual grade is.</p>
<p>Do you have proof that you turned in the assignments? Like, if they were types they’ll have a stamp of when they were last edited, if you have those and the timestamp is before when they were due you could email them to her and point out the timestamps were from before it was due.</p>
<p>If you have some proof you turned in all assignments and can make a case that you did participate in class I would talk to your adviser about the appeals process. Bear in mind, though, usually when a student opens up their case to appeal the grade can go either way and the teacher can make it even lower instead of higher.</p>