The grade book

As it's once again the last day of the semester, and the grades are once again due, I sit here and ponder. And think about how for hundreds of years, teachers have been doing what I'm doing now. How I'm somehow connected to all those who went before me.

OK, so that's not what I'm doing. I'm actually jumping between several excel spreadsheets, my online class grading sheet, and our university's online grading system so fast, it's making it my eyes blurry, while trying to remember which class, which student, and what grade I'm trying to look at now. Inside my head, things sound something like this right now, "87.88, 87.88, OK, yeah, that's what the online system has too. Now, did she take the final? OK, let's put that grade in here, what does that up to? Now let's check that with the user report. And what happens if I curve it like so? OK, 94.5, 94.5, that goes here. Hey, that doesn't add up. What?! Oh what did I do now?"

So no pondering, no reminiscing, just me and my computer. And sometimes I really truly wish we could just go back to the old-fashioned grade book. You know, those books that always had this odd square shape, and twenty thousand columns on one page. Those used to make teaching mysterious, almost mystical. As a student, you would look at your teacher's grading book, and wonder how they made sense of all of that. And now, students can lean over your shoulder, and comment on your excel spreadsheet. Poof! Mystique is gone!

I remember when they introduced collegiate online grading systems. Believe it or not, it wasn't that long ago that grades were still turned in on a piece of paper. Professors would calculate their grades, fill them in on a form, and send them, via interdepartmental mail, to, well, I don't know. You see, in my case, I just gave them to the department secretary who took care of it for us. I'm telling you, those were the days. But apparently, someone wasn't happy, and our grading system received the "the latest innovation in higher education", namely online grading. These systems were supposed to make the faculty's lives easier, streamline the grading process, and do a whole host of other things that were supposed to make the university one big happy place. Or something.

To be honest with you, I'm not sure who is happy right now, but the faculty aren't doing any happy dances yet. The systems work great, but there are little catches that can really turn a sunny happy day into a pit of misery. Like the catch that if you scroll down the page, the last grade you put in changes. Don't ask me who invented that, but if you use your mouse to scroll, your last grade will drop one whole grade (from an A to a B to a C, etc) with each scroll-click. Or the fact that the list of students in the online system may not be the exact list you have. Or you and the system might disagree on what constitutes "in alphabetical order". My current grading system is trying to convince me, for instance, that K. Smith comes before A. Smith. And that would be fine if you could enter each student's grade separately, but you can't. The system presents you with a really long list of all your students, with their names on the far right, and the grading box on the far left of the screen. You thus have to enter the grades in order, because there is no way of knowing if this box belongs to Felicia or William. If you're not aware of those little differences, and you're entering grades based on the order of your list of students, you can be in for quite a surprise when you print out your grades for one last final check.

Of course, Excel doesn't help either. It really doesn't. Well, it does in the sense that I no longer have to use a calculator to figure out my grades, but it also offers way too many opportunities to make your life way more complicated. Like curving for instance. Very few teachers used to curve, and if they did, it would entail dropping the students' lowest grade, or counting something as extra credit. Now, with excel, you can calculate means, and standard deviations, and create a curve so complicated, it should be presented at a conference. And because you can, you do. Or at least I do. And so what should be a simple, "let's add up my grades" turns into a major statistical operation.

And then I'm not even talking about online classes. These not only have their own grading system altogether, but which are also accessible to the students, which they can and will email throughout the semester complaining about how the grades up there can't possibly be right.

No, I'm telling you, the days of the grading book weren't so bad.