Grade entry, submission deadlines and the new SIS

Exams are nearly here, pushing us even closer to spring, when faculty will enter grades using the new Student Information System (SIS) for the first time.

“With the targeted training sessions held across campus in March, as well as the training videos and step-by-step PDFs in Moodle, there has been strategic support to help faculty with the transition,” says Bradley Tucker associate vice-president of Registrarial Services and university registrar. “We’re confident that everyone can adapt to the new grade entry process.”

Drop-in sessions and a rapid response team

For system users who feel they need more support, the SIS team is preparing to launch a rapid response team to provide assistance to academic units within the university.

“The team will engage in such activities as drop-in training, personalized visits, help with responses to questions via phone or email and facilitation of group training sessions,” says Tucker.

Additionally, faculty and staff can also attend the SIS Drop-in sessions. These sessions, which started on March 30 and continue through to April 10, offer an opportunity for faculty and staff to discuss the new SIS functionalities in a face-to-face environment with the training staff. Please register here.

Ready to submit grades?

Faculty submit grades from within the new SIS. Once grades have been entered for all students on the roster, faculty and instructors select “Ready for Review” from the “Approval Status” pull-down menu in the Grade Roster Action field, followed by "Save". This action submits the grades for approval.

“The SIS doesn’t present a new challenge for faculty reaching the grade submission deadlines,” says Catherine Bolton, Concordia’s vice-provost of Teaching and Learning, who explains that there are two submission deadlines for undergraduate grades. “For undergraduate students who are potentially graduating, their grades need to be submitted no later than three calendar days after the scheduled final exam in a course. If there’s no final examination, then the grades need to be submitted no later than three calendar days after the last scheduled class in a course.”

For undergraduate students who are continuing in their program, Bolton says, all final grades for all courses are required to be submitted no later than seven calendar days after the university’s last scheduled final examination. Find a list of this year's academic dates here.

For graduate courses, final grades for all courses are required to be submitted no later than seven calendar days after the university’s last scheduled final examination, which is May 2, 2015.

Grade entry recap

Grade entry was one of the seven topics featured during the March training session for faculty. For anyone who missed those sessions or wants to revisit the training, there are training videos and PDFs available in Moodle. If you do not have these modules in your MyConcordia portal, please contact sisproject@concordia.ca. The project team is also preparing a step-by-step guide that will be distributed through your Faculties.

Functionality update

During this first phase of implementation, it isn’t possible to upload mass grades from Excel into the SIS. Additionally, professors cannot see the grade distribution across their courses, but grade approvers have access to that information once the grades have been submitted for approval.

To help facilitate mass grade entry now, before future functionality is provided, there is a valuable tip.

“You can enter all the students who got Bs or As at once,” says Reham Mahdi, SIS training manager and IITS training coordinator at the training location. “You simply tick off the box to select their names, then add the grade with one click.”

To learn specifics about the SIS support structure and more, consult the SIS Project Renewal Hub.