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- Primary needs for the 2 series online labs is ensuring that reports are understood by TA's and functioning properly and to load final lab grades into MyUCDavis.
- They rely on Gradebook for most Chemistry courses. The Chemistry department is fairly proactive and has been using Gradebook for years.
- There are many difficulties encountered in Gradebook - primarily due to issues of joining. They must often create as many as 17 gradebooks for a quarter. The instructor must assign proxies to each section twice - once for the head TA and once for each TA. This is a hugely redundant process since the instructor must do it (cannot have his head TA do it due to permissions.) There is no mass proxy tool so it is time-consuming and tedious.
- The second redundancy is that they can copy a gradebook from a previous quarter or from the current quarter, but they must do this once for each section. There is no method to copy to all gradebooks in the course. The redundancy occurs because they must keep each section separate to limit TA access to only their sections. It's a tedious process for multiple sections of 17 or more.
- Their grading process makes use of the letter grade cutoffs at the end of the course very difficult. The head TA downloads each of the sections and then combines them into a single spreadsheet. He uses Excel to sort and to create stats and graphic displays for the instructor. (The graphs and stats portion has been pre-programmed in Chemistry for long-term usage.) The instructor then determines the grading cutoffs for this course. The instructor and head TA then enter the cutoffs for each of the 17 sections manually. (The TA does not think he can enter cutoffs - function may be limited to instructor.) This is another repetitive process.
- It would be much easier if they could join the gradebooks at the end of the quarter (after all TA's have updated their sections grades), but they have been warned that the joining process may cause grades to be lost.
- The ability to safely join sections during the final grading process is a key issue.
- They do use the global function to assign recommended grades and then review and make changes as needed for special circumstances (e.g., student misses a mid-term but has a doctor's excuse.)
- Primary functionality would be the ability to view Gradebook with both options - individually, by section and also as a course. TA's previous experience was with an instructor that wanted him to join the gradebook and then enter each TA's information - this was NOT a good experience.
- The instructor was unaware if there was a notification process (to his department Zordept) in the Gradebook submission process.
- Instructor keeps spreadsheets stored locally and hard copies are stoede in the front office. Carlito waits a few days before submitting final grades but does not display the grades to students prior to submission.
Susan Kauzlarich, Chemistry, Professor
Also Chris Fleming, Milady Ninonuevo, Head TA's
5/12/05
Susan Kauzlarich teaches multiple section and smaller graduate level courses - most of the discussion was about multi-section needs.
- Initial setup of Gradebook and joining are the most critical issues. They desire a one to many type of setup functionality both in Website Builder and Gradebook
- Online lab specific: Problem with inconsistent font sizing for copies to Excel and ability to upload lab scores into cms are desired
- Are seeing changes in their processes and new needs due to shifting to an electronic medium
- Gradebook process: initializing a new GB by opening a section then pasting multiple times into individual sections; desired changes would be a global format. Must keep gradebooks unjoined due to access levels. Desire to review in both modes - unjoined for TA's and joined for instructor, head TA's and students. The current click and paste process is time-consuming.
- Their needs for joined Gradebooks include stats and comparison (of student performance) for the course.
- They cannot search for a student unless they now the student's section. Would like an internal search function within GB to allow them to locate a student within a large multi-section course.
- Would like a stats package for GB by course with standard stats - average, mean, median, distribution, and graphs.
- Would like to further limit TA access to only input grades - not edit them. TA's sometimes changes points w/o informing instructor or head TA's - even change grades assigned by authority.
- Would like spell check feature in Geckomail/my email functions
- Instructor uses GB for smaller courses, but finds it unwieldy for multi-sections. Downloads info section by section into single Excel form for statistical reporting and final grade determination. MUST have stats by course - not section.
- When copying GB from previous quarter, the default may be set to show grades - then copied into new versions. This is not desirable. Find setting up is not intuitive.
- Instructor uses the fgs system rather than GB to submit final grades. Finds it easier and would prefer to upload entire course (or multiple sections) rather than by letter sections (all A's) or individually.
- Considerable worries about GB issues of security and backups. Worries about not keeping local copies. It would be great if she could print the grades for all sections with a one touch request.
- Most repeated issues were the tedious process of cut & paste and repetitive nature of the work required by TA's and instructor.
- Instructor also disappointed in the proxy assignment process - very time consuming and repetitive.
Christopher Fassnacht, Physics (Astronomy Group), Asst Professor
5/13/05
Chris has been using Gradebook since Spring '03. He attended training at TRC and began using GB for his Astronomy 10 course. Originally a multiple section course - there is now a single section with multiple separate labs. Generally open to 75 students (small version) or 150 students (large version.) He commented on both Gradebook and Quiz Builder.
- "Overall, I like it a lot"
- The only difficulty he's encountered with GB is the uploading format when he first started using it - now he know how to format the spreadsheet for upload.
- He's primarily a Linux user but also has Windows; it's difficult to switch from one to the other (work flow).
- He has 1 or 2 TA's for AST 010 depending on the course size. He does not set up proxy access, but (switches to Windows and) downloads the class roster from GB so that his TA can grade homework assignments.
- Dr. Pat Boeshaar took Quiz Builder training through TRC and taught him how to use it. He started using quizzes in Fall '04 for AST 002 (60+ students.) He did not feel that it was intuitive but is now comfortable using it.
- Student experience for quizzes in Fall 2004 was that it failed to work in some browsers and/or machines. Also a few students experienced a lost connection which was a problem since he only allows them to take the quiz once.
- For his quizzes, he generally uses a few multiple choice questions and one text questions. He finds it difficult to navigate through student text responses since users must go to each student, then click down to the response, and then back up again to access the next student's response. He finds this process time consuming but doesn't mind viewing the responses individually. He also cannot determine which responses he has already viewed as the visited link/indicator does not work. Also, the problems graded indicator does not work. He finds that the text grading process is time consuming.
- He generally creates and releases the quiz on the weekend and students normally have about 2 days to complete it.
- For grading, he downloads the roster from GB and allows his TA to set up the columns (homework, etc.) in the Excel copy as he wishes. The TA sends weekly grades to him. When the grading is completed, the instructor uploads the spreadsheets into his master. There are generally parallel grades in his local copies and GB except for quiz grades generated online only.
- He finds the display of stats for plotting in GB (90%-80%-70% bars) to limited and not enough of an indicator of the spread of grades. He determines the percentages himself in Excel and then tests against the numbers generated in GB.
- He enters cutoffs after determining the statistics and uses gradebook for final submission.
- He notes that all his real issues are with the processes in QB. It takes multiple clicks to do simple things. He uses it fairly actively and finds that students (especially incoming freshman) are used to using the internet.