SMART GRADES.NET™ Definitions

Academic success represents a set of characteristics, both innate and learned, that allows students to complete tasks, learn certain skills, or discern and apply values. Academic success may be enhanced, forgotten, or never applied, but the important thing is that academic success can be improved. GPA (grade point average) is an important measure of academic success.

Included here are values and characteristics that need to be learned before an assignment is ever written or finished. An example of one of these characteristics is task precision. Students must be able to organize the assignment, budget their time to research the subject, and meet deadlines. These non-writing skills are essential to completing the paper; they are the paper's foundation. They are also the "soft skills" important in student success and GPA.

We know that some students are more precise than others; they take more time revising their assignments, checking their facts, and correcting their answers. Precision-minded students get higher grades than most of their fellow classmates. Why? Because high school teachers and professors demand precision from their students, regardless of the course or the assignments.

For a better understanding of the characteristics of SMART GRADES.net™, we have placed the eight factors into an octagon.

When students take SmartGrades, each definition and its importance to SMART GRADES.NET™ is explained on their results page that can be printed out.