Our desire is to make your job easier and quicker to do while supporting students in a
better way. One of those ways is to try to support practices that are more efficient. Last week,
the deadline for reporting midterm grades occurred. According to Records, this was the least
successful reporting cycle across the university. CLAS, as a college, wants to support
sustainable practices and wants to make this process part of that as much as possible.
Currently grade reporting takes away from other tasks in the unit, consumes the energy and
attention of most COTs and unit heads, and thus is an expensive process.
Cost to Units
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Time involved in the process and communicating with faculty
Energy involved in communicating to various stakeholders as the time to deadline
approaches
Cost to Students (potential cost)
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The non-entry of grades will be very detrimental to students who may lose their
academic standing
o which could result in their next semester classes being dropped
Grades not recorded by the grade deadline are NR which could impact:
o Scholarship status
o Financial Aid
Academic standing- By the time the grade is changed and they are in good standing,
there will be no more seats in the classes their registered classes that were dropped.
The issues at midterm seem to center on whether faculty are looking to see if they have
students to grade in the 10 day window for grades or a misconception about what midterm
grades are. Records Office sends each faculty member a paragraph describing the grading
process and asking that faculty learn the Banner grading system prior to the grading period. Our
office also outlines the purpose of midterm grades in the unit head and faculty mailing.
What some CLAS units are doing to facilitate the timely reporting of grades in their units:
BIO, CHM, PSY, A and D, MOV:
BIO Barb Ellis on our office staff sends reminders to all the faculty in advance of the
beginning of the grade submission, and then targeted reminders to those who appear on
the lists sent to us by Roxanne Mol. As we get close to the deadline (the day before), I
will add my encouragement as well. Barb also will call faculty who may be on the list
because they are missing only a few grades in a larger class, since this sometimes was
something the faculty member overlooked by mistake. We routinely have several faculty
who wait until the last minute to submit their grades, but since they also reliably do this
by the deadline, I don’t get too worked up about it, but they are sent reminders.
Art and Design Our Department Coordinator follows procedures very close to what Neil
has described. I get personally involved the morning of the deadline if we have not heard
from faculty yet as to their progress and plans to submit grades. If we know that
someone is doing any traveling during the time when grades are due, we send both
targeted emails and phone calls in advance of the deadline.
CHM It is very simple. The records office sends e-mails with the number of grades still
outstanding. The office staff forwards those e-mails to the faculty with outstanding
grades. As the deadline gets closer, they start making phone calls in addition to emails. Perhaps it helps that the Unit Head makes it clear to the faculty that if a professor
complains about being pestered by the office staff it is the professor and not the staff
who is at fault. As the deadline approaches, if a new faculty or temporary instructor
(adjunct/visitor) hasn’t entered grades, the Unit head will contact that person to make
sure there are no problems.
Banner cannot have multiple faculty be listed as responsible for entering grades. So for
our INDEPENDENT STUDY CLASS (499) where we might have a dozen of more
instructors grading 20 students, the Unit Head is listed a professor of record and he is
responsible for entering grades. Registration for 499 in by PMT, so we have a record of
which student is working with which professor. The office keeps this list so at the end of
the semester, the UH know which faculty to pester for grades.
PSY We monitor and nag. Gently but persistently.
MOV See the detailed tables for both midterm and final grades
What CLAS is going to do to further facilitate this process:
1. Work with FTLC Adjunct Academy to add a module on grading, midterm grades, and
planning a semester syllabus to maximize timely completion of grades. Do units train
their new faculty on grading as well?
2. Timely grade reporting is a baseline expectation. Require a notation in the annual review
of tenure track faculty about the timely reporting of midterm and final grades. This is
related to entire classes that are missing, not the random omission of an individual grade
(exception x99).