Grade integration: Making end of semester task for professors a little easier
As technology continues to improve, so too has the traditional task of inputting end-of-semester grades
When I first became a part of Admissions and Records in 2010 the Final Grading process was less than efficient.
Each faculty member would submit their paper grade roster to Admissions and Records, and these would have to be manually entered and then verified by the limited staff we had at that time. Our institution processes around 750,000 individual grades per academic year, so you can imagine how long this took to process.
In 2011, the University upgraded to a new Student Information System which allowed instructors the ability to post their grades electronically via the MyNEVADA portal. Although more time efficient, this was still painstaking for instructors with large class sizes. As part of the initial roll out of PeopleSoft it was a promise that instructors would have the ability to inegrate their grades with WebCampus - but it was simply not feasible at that time. As we continued to progress with technology, in 2014 we upgraded to give instructors the ability to change grades electronically in MyNEVADA instead of submitting a paper Change of Grade form to our office.
As technology began to increase in other areas around campus, Admissions and Records continued its desire to seek innovative solutions. This brought us back to the original promise of uploading grades from WebCampus to MyNEVADA. Teaching and Learning Technologies received several complaints surrounding the issue that instructors would spend so much time in WebCampus grading assignments, creating a grading scheme that would output the final grade, only to then be required to painstakingly manually enter said grades into MyNEVADA. We had long since understood their frustrations and heard their complaints, and we needed to provide them a long overdue solution.
Fast forward to now - the Admissions and Records Office, Office of Information Technology and Teaching & Learning Technologies teamed up to bring the University of Nevada, Reno faculty a new and exciting way to post their final grades. Instructors can now simply press a button on their MyNEVADA grade roster, and this will retrieve grades from WebCampus to their MyNEVADA Final Grade Roster. Not only is this more time-effective, it also minimizes the likelihood of data entry error. A small group of faculty members around campus helped us roll the project out in Summer 2017.
After receiving glowing reviews, valuable feedback and a lot of "THANK YOU'S!!" we are now ready to make this feature available for all instructors across campus for Fall 2017. In my opinion, the most appealing part of this project is that it can truly benefit all instructors. Whether you have a class size of five or 500, this new tool will get you through grading quicker and more effectively, saving you anywhere from 10 minutes to two hours.
For more information about the WebCampus and MyNevada Grade integration project please feel free to look at this information site. We will be holding four open sessions to assist instructors in posting their grades on Dec. 21-22.
To view these sessions, and sign up to attend, please navigate here. For specific questions regarding your WebCampus account please email webcampus@unr.edu, and for questions regarding your MyNEVADA email mynevada@unr.edu.
