Faculty Gradebook Stories

Stories Collected by Interview in 2005

Faculty were contacted and asked specific questions regarding their use of MyUCDavis Gradebook feature

Questions:

1. Are you using Gradebook to submit final grades or do you use the final grading process only?
2. Are you submitting grades for a course with multiple sections or with multiple instructors?
3. Do you enter final grades yourself or does a department MSO or TA enter final grades?
4. Do you find the instructions on the website clear? Are you able to get answers when you need help?
5. Are you able to easily discern whether grades for your courses have already been submitted?
6. Have you experienced any difficulties when submitting final grades?
7. Are there any comments you would like to make regarding the final grading process or Gradebook?

Brian Enderle, Chemistry, Affiliated Faculty/Lab Coordinator

May 5, 2005

• TA's do all the grading for his chemistry courses. As the chemistry lab coordinator (for the 2ABC series), he teaches them how to set up the categories in Gradebook. Most TA's follow his setup - each exam is a separate category although some TA's set up all three exams under one category.
• He uses the MW-developed online labs and he would like to be able to upload the final grades from the online lab program into the total lab score category in MyUCDavis.
• One of the biggest issues is that the head TA needs to join sections to create identical Gradebook setups and to make all TA's proxy to their sections, but joining is not desired for multiple TA's to grade. Also, the stats are meaningless to students when only compared within a section rather than over the course.
  The desired ability would be to join all the Gradebooks but to retain TA's individual access and for students to see stats in relation to the course not their section only.
• Always views final grades through Gradebook. His current process for submitting is:
  • TA's spend 1-2 hours grading their sections
  • Bryan releases the grades but does not submit them until about 5 days later; this decreased the requests for grade changes after submission.
  • Submits final grades section by section. This can be time consuming as he teaches up to 30 sections in a quarter.
• Regarding MyUCD instructions: he trains his TA's but also tells them they can go to the Arbor for help.
• All grade information is not explained. When looking for information about NS status, we could not find the grade key anywhere in gradebook except on the Enter Final Grades screen.

Andreas Toupadakis, Chemistry Professor

May 5, 2005 (by email)

Regarding the Gradebook: Classes with large numbers of multiple sections like all of Chem 2 suffer from a large shortcoming. Each TA needs access to his/her own sections only but it would be great if the head TA and instructor could look at the whole class all together simultaneously.

As it stands for grading exams now, the scores of all 17 sections have to be downloaded to excel individually and then opened individually and concatenated into one long excel spreadsheet manually in order to make any whole-class determination on grades.

Also the students get the impression from viewing their grades thru MyUCDavis that their section averages/stat info apply to the whole class. I am aware that the whole class and all sections can be joined- but then TAs with access to the class start making errors in changing the grades of students not in their own sections.

Liz Klodginski, Mathematics, Visiting Research Asst Prof

May 6, 2005

• Prof. Klodginski uses Gradebook for grading and final grade submission. She teaches single section and multiple section courses. She generally joins the sections in Gradebook for multiple section courses. Mix of herself and her TA for grading.
• Mostly a good grading experience. An exception was uploading grade files and access issue.
  • She uses a grader on some categories and would like to be able to limit grader access to a particular category rather than giving them full Gradebook access.
  • The grader emails the graded spreadsheet to the TA who enters the category grades online. Their first try at this process was difficult because of the required format for uploading. She uses a MS Office Works program on her PC, and even though she downloaded the spreadsheet from Gradebook, she had difficulty uploading back to Gradebook.
    There were no instructions found for explaining the required Excel format for upload. Found out by experimentation what the proper format should be for upload.
• She submits final grades through Gradebook
• She has emailed for help when needed and received a prompt response.
• She uses a primary/alternative weighing option for determining student grades - and would like Gradebook to be more flexible. For determining final grades, she allows student scored to be weighed either with both mid-terms or with only the higher mid-term grade, whichever is higher.
  She currently downloads the grading output to Excel so that she can add a third column that automatically determines which of the two scores is higher.
• Since she's using two grading alternatives, she finds the stats and graphics are unclear. When she sets the cutoffs - not sure which method is being used to generate those stats. She uses the stats primarily so students can see where they are in the standings
• She believes it is important that students are able to see their grades all through the course. She noticed that the student view stats feature displays a lot of information to students except for their overall average (score) for the course. She provides them with the formula for grading in class, but students must calculate that information for themselves.

Dan Nurco, Chemistry, Teaching Assistant

May 9, 2005

Gradebook comments:

• Had difficulty finding the grade breakdown by category after final grades were submitted. Feels this is an issue for checking scores of students with incompletes.
• Would like to see graphs generated for letter grades as well as for detailed grade cutoff. Would use these stats (letter grades w/o + or -) to determine cutoffs prior to final grade submission. Would like this available w/o special prompts/inputs
• Would like more warnings. I.e., he changed the cutoffs after reviewing the final grades, but did not realize that the grades were not recalculated to his new cutoffs prior to submission.
• Would like TA's access limited to proxy for their students (sections) - but needs to be able to grade all students in fully-joined sections. This is especially important when uploading outside grading content (like exams) that is geared for the entire course.

Carol Gee, Mathematics, Visiting Research Asst Prof

May 9, 2005

Carol uses GradeBook as her primary grading tool. She teaches mid to large scale classes - varying in size from about 40 to 300 students for a single section. Since the students are listed in a single section this creates large grading sheets. There is a big lag time for loading grade sheets and many screens are difficult to manage. The grading sheet itself is in a small area of the frameset.

• One major difficulty for large sections is that the button controls at the top of the page cannot be accessed without a lot of scrolling. Making those buttons non-scrollable might make submissions easier.
• Her grading process includes regular TA's who grade homework manually, graduate TA's who are given cms grading access and herself. She would like to be able to grant limited access to Gradebook to regular TA's by category.
• Ran into difficulties the first time she tried to upload grading sheets as the file had changed from download to TA and back to her. Finally determined that the file must be tab-delimited text file for upload. No instructions found in the Gradebook.
• When she goes to View Grades as a Student it works inconsistently - sometimes she can view the grades and at other times she is told she does not have permission. She has not found any logic to why it works only sometimes.
• She would like to see additional methods for accessing grades. For example, sometimes she needs to change grades for an individual student, but it's very time consuming to go to each category and wait for the full grading sheet to load before she can change the grade.
• She felt the Gradebook system was unclear during her first final grading process. She was unsure if she would be notified and was not sure if she could save grades without submitting them.
• She was also unclear as to whether students can view her cutoff choices.
• Her department recommends downloading as backups. She would like to be able to download grades for all items in all categories as backups and for her personal records. She can currently only download for a category grades or item grades within a category.
• She often needs to download category grades as backups and to continue grading students who are dropped from the course temporarily (due to registration issues.) While she has never experienced problems with grades when students return, her department informed her that this could occur and she should maintain her own records.
• She would like the ability to rearrange categories within Gradebook. It's difficult to add a category once the gradebook is generated, since it defaults to the bottom of the list and cannot be rearranged like Website builder allows.
• Also, Website builder allows her to view what items are visible to students in the visual representation on the left. She would like Gradebook to inform her in this manner as well.
• She noticed when looking at the student's view of the quiz responses that non-completed scores are displayed as -1 (e.g., for homework not done yet.)
• She would like the roster view to generate an actual email address link rather than just the first portion of the email in text only.

Kristi Case, Physics/Geology, Undergraduate Program Coordinator

5/10/05

Kristi contacted faculty in her department prior to my arrival and gathered feedback regarding the grading process. Faculty comments follow this interview.

Observations: Newer faculty tends to use Gradebook as is and are more receptive to using the program. Many faculty do not use their Kerberos login often enough to remember it come grading time. Prior to Fall 04, she was responsible for distributing and collecting grading sheets.

• Priority request: she would like to be able to sort by processed so that she could easily determine which faculty have not submitted grades yet.
• In their Walker Annex facility, the 7A instructors determine grades by course. Multiple sections (A AND B) are assigned to a single faculty member. The changes from Fall to Winter were an improvement, but still do not allow global uploading of grades. Faculty uses their own internal grading system and then uploads their grades into FGS using Excel.
• Many instructors experience difficulty loading Excel files. There are multiple machine types, PC, Mac and Linux, and the process is difficult. The format errors that appear are unclear. The upload process would not accept a CSV file. She/they are unable to understand the error messages - they followed instructions but are often forced to resave their files. Often resolved by trial and error, but are unclear as to what they did that finally allows the upload to proceed.
• When entering grades manually, there is a slow response on the bubble sheet, i.e., she enters a grade then has to wait before she can enter another bubble. May be a slow computer issue, but it's still frustrating.
• She finds the email confirmation helpful. Her process is to print out the fgs sheet, then to check off sections/names are she received the confirmations. The ability to sort would be a big improvement. Combining all sections for an instructor by course would be another big improvement for her department.
• There are research course taught offsite around the world. She often enters these grades herself after receiving an email from the instructor indicating the grade. Often these are single student courses with a 'U' or 'S' grade.
• One of the reasons that faculty keep separate grading sheet is that they want to keep student grades even if the student drops the course.
• Faculty would be happy if they could upload the entire course grade sheet, even if the program accepted only A section grades. Usingthis method, they may need to do it 2-3 times (A,B,C), but at least they could use their existing forms.
• Some instructors have TA's who enter grades in Gradebook for them.
• She provides hands on assistance to faculty primarily for grading uploads.
• Faculty downloads and uploads rosters from both MyUCDavis and the Registrar's office. They experience problems in these processes and would like to see improved acceptance and performance in these areas.
• The online grading process reduced her workload and she has less physical work than the old scantron process (distribution, copying, checking, filing.)
• Starting Fall 2004, she topped keeping grade copies (i.e., scantron copies) but she is still keeping other types of forms and petitions for the department records.
• The greatest improvement to date has been the removal of the non-graded courses from the list she sees.
• Her department did experience problems in Winter 2005 with notifications for their courses coming in with the instructor listed as Ushida who was not in their department. She contacted IT Express from the number on the flyer and the received confirmation in a timely manner that the grades were submitted by the correct instructor. She was happy with the resolution of this issue.

Ariane Mc Kiernan, Physics, via email to Kristi Case:

Dear Kristi,

I have two comments about the electronic grade submission:

1) Bubbling in the grades took forever; I remember waiting almost a minute after clicking on one grade, then I was able to click on the next student's grade. Again, that took another minute before I was able to go on. I don't know if this was because of some server problem occuring at that particular time (5am on a Friday). Needless to say, I decided to submit the grades another way since this method was taking too much time. (see #2 below).

2) It would be more convenient to be able to submit the grades for the entire class and not separately by lecture section (A or B). There are cases where a student is registered for both lecture sections (by mistake), but even then it's easier to download the entire class and compare what the registrar student list is to our database of students. Often the registrar has a student registered in another lecture section and then here we are with our sorted list of students for a particular lecture section and we don't show them there. What difference does it make which lecture section they are in? If we get a list from the registrar that identifies a student in a particular lecture section, and compare to our list (with lecture section visible) then there shouldn't be a mix-up with grades going to a student in lec A when they were registered in B. In that case, we would give the student in lec A a "No work submitted" , and the same student registered in lec B, the actual grade. I hope I'm making some sense on this one. If it's not clear then I can explain it to you over the phone.

Those are the only comments I have (they have already fixed the biggest problem from last year: having to download a separate list for each DL section---which was 22 downloads back then!).

Thanks,
Ariane Mc Kiernan
Physics 7A Lecturer

John F. Gunion, Physics, via email to Kristi Case

I decided not to use MyUCDavis because of several things lacking.

1) the ability to choose flexible weighting for different grades and to choose alternative grading schemes (such as dropping one midterm and reweighting other things), keeping only the one most favorable for each student.

2) lack of proper graphics capability for plotting distributions of grades on each exam and of final scores and the like.

I know of several others who find these problems a big issue.

JG

Linton Corruccini, Physics, via email to Kristi Case:

Kristi,

Please ask to fix the grade submission software so that it will upload standard Excel files in .xls format (not just .csv format). The submission page currently is very fussy and will not accept files that I convert to .csv format.

Linton

Carlito Lebrilla, Chemistry, Professor

Also, Erid Dodds, Head TA
5/11/05

Carlito teaching both large multiple section courses as well as smaller (15-20 students) graduate level courses. Eric Dodds is his head TA this quarter.

• 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.