Support alternate grading

onRecord does not currently offer alternate grading for specific students in a course that should receive a grade that falls outside of the typical grade translation table (For example, Withdraw Pass, Med Exc). The grade entered by the teacher/grading manager must exist in the grade translation table that the grade is associated with. Adding a “WP” or “MEx” to a numeric/letter grade translation table will not work because of the fact that you cannot exclude a certain grade from the GPA. Specific courses can be excluded from the GPA, however you’re not able to exclude a “WP” from calculating into a student’s grade average. If you added the "WP" to the grade translation table, it would be factored into the GPA which would mean that it would need to have a numeric equivalent. The work around to get these grades to appear on the report card is very time consuming and results in a huge number of inactive courses in Core:
1. Create a specific grade translation table for the alternate grades
2. Create a specific grade category for the alternate grades
3. Create a specific grade plan group for the alternate grades
4. Create a new course in the system every time a student needs an alternate grade
5. Offer the course
6. Create a section
7. Enroll the student a grade
8. Mark the course as inactive

  • Guest
  • Mar 3 2016
  • Implemented
  • Attach files
  • Guest commented
    January 20, 2017 17:44

    We are definitely looking for this as well.  We often offer pass/fail to students who have missed significant class time due to medical issues, and to our first-semester international students who are English Language Learners.  The goal is for the Pass grade to have no impact on the GPA.  We have devised a very awkward, complicated work-around for now.  However, learning that OnRecord cannot accommodate this problem was a very surprising and disappointing hurdle in our training, and might have led us to consider alternate grading software if we had been aware of it prior to signing up for OnRecord.  (It never occurred to us to ask about this - it seemed like a very basic feature that our previous, less-expensive grading system incorporated with no difficulty).

    The workaround which I am using is this:

    1) Teacher notifies registrar prior to grading that a student is receiving a pass

    2) Registrar creates a unique score in the grade translation table specifically for use for this student during this term.  It keeps an alternate equiv value of zero, temporarily.

    3) When all grades are in, Registrar manually calculates the student's GPA excluding the class with the Pass

    4) Registrar changes the Alt Equiv Value for this student's unique Pass score to whatever the student's calculated GPA.  

    5) The GPA is unchanged by the Pass grade, and the credits still show up on the transcript in the right category.

  • +1