The Do’s and Don’ts of Grading—Part 4
You would think I would have run out of things to tell you about grading by now but it is obviously an extremely complex and delicate operation that can only be directed by someone with a Mensa eligible IQ and the ability to multi-task while still retaining the personality of Mother Theresa. But I hate to brag. Allow me to continue…
DO remember that we cannot take grades over the phone or by email. The grade rosters are official documents and, like our children’s handmade Christmas ornaments, we are required to keep them forever. All grade rosters (or attendance sheets or 107 screens) are imaged and then sent to Records Retention.
DO check your grade roster before you submit it. Some common mistakes are: Grades are not bubbled in, a student receives the grade for the person above or below her, no pluses or minuses are bubbled in, the roster is not signed, there are stray grades bubbled in on the front, it’s been stapled, pen or sharpee were used instead of pencil, grades of A+ or F- were assigned, or names were crossed off. The biggest mistake, of course, is not turning your grades in on time. That’s actually pretty rare!
DO remember that if you are using the 115 screen to grade you cannot leave one single grade blank. If you do not want to grade a student, use JJJ in the grade column. Leaving even one grade line blank will block the grades for everyone on that page. This is the most common error in grading on line. To make sure your grades went in, look at the 1G7 screen for your course.
DO remember to send me an email to let me know you graded online. We check every course that is graded on line to make sure all the grades ‘took’. (See note above!) About 10% of the courses graded on line do NOT get recorded because a page was skipped or a student’s grade was left blank.
DO remember that once you turn in your grade rosters or input grades on the 115 screen, grade changes need to be made using the Academic Record Change Form (aka Grade Change Form). Due to the volume of grade rosters and the various stages they need to go through, it is almost impossible for us to put our hands on a specific roster so you can make changes after it has been turned in. I know this makes us look disorganized but rest assured we have things under control…we just can’t find a specific roster RIGHT NOW!
DO remember that we cannot give special handling in the disbursement of grade rosters. It takes several people in several offices several hours each to get the rosters out in a timely fashion. We can’t pull out individual rosters to mail them or move them to another campus or hold in our office for you to pick up. Trying to honor special delivery requests would hold up the distribution of grade rosters for the entire college.
Tomorrow I will try to wind things up because I know you are all busy with end of the semester loose end tying AND because Betsy seems to think I should do some spring room book work rather than sit and write Tribune articles. I think I can squeeze one more article past her!
Deborah Benjamin
Registration and Records
12/09/2004 |