Survey: e-Grading is a success

A growing number of faculty and instructional staff are embracing e-Grading through My UW–Madison in the wake of the initiative’s successful launch.

A joint project of the Office of the Registrar and Department of Information Technology, the initiative provides faster turnaround of the reporting of grades to students and presents faculty with the ability to submit final grades from anywhere they have Web access.

A survey of 657 faculty and instructional staff showed that 90 percent agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied overall with electronic grade submission.

“The e-Grading process is immediate, it saves intermediate steps, and everything can be done from my desk,” says Harold Scheub, professor of African languages and literature. “This is a computer enhancement that decidedly has the humans who must use it foremost in mind.”

Increased efficiency and ease of use for faculty at varying levels of technology readiness were two goals of the initiative.

“As is always the case when I am asked to do something new on a computer, I approached this with some trepidation,” says Graham Wilson, chair of the Department of Political Science. “But when the day came, it was easy. In fact, it was easier to enter grades accurately than with paper copies.”

Wilson adds that as department chair, “My faculty are absolutely insistent that it will remain the responsibility of the professor to submit grades.”

In response to faculty feedback, changes already have been made to the appearance of the electronic grade roster. In addition, a significant amount of feedback centered on grade entry time and matters related to grading large courses.

As a result, the development team is seeking solutions that will speed up the processing time between entry of individual grades and is exploring options to enable greater flexibility in grading large lectures with multiple discussion sections or labs.

Receiving a confirmation that rosters have been submitted and received also was a priority among respondents; methods to meet that need are being investigated.

“Technology continues to advance, and efforts to capitalize on those improvements are ongoing,” says Joanne Berg, registrar and associate vice chancellor for enrollment management. “We do recognize that there are still some unresolved issues, and we are working to prioritize possible fixes and implement as many enhancements to the system as possible.

“e-Grading will always be a continuous improvement project,” she adds. “The more we hear from faculty the better the product and the process will be in the long run.”

Complete survey results and more information about e-Grading are available online.

The e-Grading system can be accessed through the My UW–Madison portal at http://my.wisc.edu/.