While WSU has implemented a variety of accommodations to help students succeed during this difficult semester, very little has been implemented for career-track faculty with heavy teaching loads that have suddenly become much heavier. The university should consider an extension for the final grade submission deadline. Some career-track faculty have a teaching load of five classes with enrollments of up to 40 students per course without grading support. Additionally, we have been encouraged to use alternatives to multiple-choice exams to limit proctoring costs, and to be lenient with students who need additional time or resources. Career-track faculty with the highest teaching loads are disproportionately women, who are statistically likely to disproportionately bear caregiving and educational responsibilities at home while daycares and schools are closed, as well as higher expectations of emotional support from students. These faculty members do not benefit from the tenure clock extension, which is the only university-level response offered to faculty so far. This teaching workload crisis requires a university-level response. A extension for final grade submission would also benefit graduate students who teach classes, another group that has stepped up to fill teaching needs across the university as positions were left unfilled in recent years to meet fiscal health goals.
Washington State University
University should consider final grade deadline extension
We have made this request to the provost. One concern is that may faculty appointments end May 15th.
The following memo went to the associate deans group on May 4th.
———————————————-
To: Instructional Faculty
From: Mary Wack, Vice Provost for Academic Engagement and Student Achievement
Date: May 4, 2020
Subject: Late Grade Submission
We appreciate that this term has brought exceptional challenges and thank you for all your work enabling students to complete the semester successfully. This memo provides guidance for several situations involving late submission of final grades.
If you have completed the vast majority of grades in a given course by May 12th, and only a few are missing, please use the myWSU grade roster to submit the completed grades on May 12th. The remainder can be submitted following the steps below.
If you need additional time to submit completed grades for the majority of a class:
*Leave the grade roster blank in myWSU on May 12th.
The grade roster in myWSU closes May 12th at 5 p.m. when degree conferral begins. You will not be able to access the grade roster after this point.
Therefore, to submit grades after this point—because we are using a remote and paperless process now–you must provide your registrar a spreadsheet that identifies the course (with Schedule Line Number), course title, section number, year, and term. This can be a title line or header. The spreadsheet needs to have 3 columns: Student name; student ID number; grade. The registrars uses this identification of the course and the grade information to make sure the grades are entered for the correct student, course, section, term and year. All these entries are manual.
For a few late grades, simply typing the information into the spreadsheet might be the quickest. Send the request to enter the grades to ro.records@wsu.edu (Pullman) or to your campus registrar and attach the Excel spreadsheet.
*Remember, instructors must provide a record of all grade transactions to the coordinator of your department for record retention purposes.
If you have a substantial number of late grades, and do not already have a spreadsheet with student name and ID#s, here are a couple options for setting up a spreadsheet without typing every name and ID number:
*Export student data from myWSU:
**From Homepage click on “Faculty Center”.
**Click on “My Schedule”. Make sure term is set for current one.
**Click on the icon to the immediate left of the column titled “Class” for the course you are working on (looks like a blackboard with an instructor standing in front of it).
**In the red toolbar on the next page (right about student names) just to the left of the word “First” there is an icon for “Download to Excel”. Click on the icon. You should get a popup window with a warning (at least on a Mac)-ignore it and continue to open the file.
**Save it locally on your computer.
OR
*Export student data from Blackboard:
**Go into course space. In left hand tool bar click on “Grade Center”.
**Click on “Full Grade Center”.
**Once loaded, click on “Work Offline” tool bar on top right-hand corner, then select “Download”.
**On next page, click on: i) Full Grade Center, ii) comma delimiter type, iii) hit “Submit” red button, iv) on next page hit “Download” and
**Open the excel file on your computer.
When you have added the grades, before May 15th, 5 p.m. send the request to enter the grades to ro.records@wsu.edu (Pullman) or to your campus registrar and attach the Excel spreadsheet.
*Remember, instructors must provide a record of all grade transactions to the coordinator of your department for record retention purposes.