Each of these methods has drawbacks: you could lose that piece of paper (that’s happened to me). You could not understand Excel well enough to know how to create the formulas necessary to calculate the grades (that’s happened to me). Course Management Systems can be cumbersome to navigate (at least the first time), and the learning curve on these systems can be steep (yes, that’s happened to me, and I consider myself technologically savvy).
There are other programs that balance the three styles mentioned here. Such programs keep the simplicity of an old skool gradebook, they can calculate grades like Excel, and they can provide similar reports that CMS programs offer. Gradekeeper is an inexpensive software program that makes keeping track of students’ grades an easy experience. Classroom Gradebook is another.
Many elementary and secondary school teachers use these and other similar programs (indeed, the marketing for these programs is geared to this audience group), but this is not to say that university faculty can’t also use them. They are easy to configure and can save you time. Many of these programs can also sync to your smartphone, helping your productivity when you are away from the office.
The programs can provide charts and graphs, if those are helpful to you (as in this one from Classroom Gradebook):
Set up for each of these programs is as simple as completing a form (as in this Gradekeeper example):
Gradekeeper is a simple program that offers an educator many tools. On the other hand, Classroom Gradebook is a little more robust, as it can provide graphs and charts depicting grade ranges for an assignment or a class. Gradekeeper is Windows, Mac, Palm OS, and Windows Mobile compatible. Classroom Gradebook is a Windows only software. Neither program is iPhone compatible (not yet, anyway).
Both programs offer free evaluation. After a 30-day trial period, Gradekeeper will cost you $20 for an individual license. After a 45-day trial period, an individual license for Classroom Gradebook costs $19.95. This is not much money for a program that can simplify your grading life.
I have used both of these programs at different times and I like them both. They are easy, they connect to my phone, and I’m not apt to lose both the phone and my computer (there is always a backup). How do you keep track of student grades? What methods are most effective for you? Do you support one type of recordkeeping over another? Please leave comments below.
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22 Responses to Grade Keeping Programs
Mark Sample - October 5, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I’ve been using Gradekeeper for years and can’t recommend it highly enough. A key feature when I first started using the program was its Palm app, which synced seamlessly with the desktop app (there’s also a Windows Mobile app). This made it easy to take attendance and do grades on the fly without lugging around a computer. Now that my Palm(s) are all but dead, I don’t use the mobile feature — and I miss it sorely. Much to my dismay, the developer has stated quite clearly that there is no iPhone/Touch app in the works (partly because Apple offers no easy way to sync individual programs).
Keri - October 5, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I love Gradekeeper! I’ve been using it for a few years now and find it much easier than the “clunky” gradebooks that come with WebCT, etc.
Kenneth Hass - October 5, 2009 at 7:05 pm
I agree with Derek…a standard spreadsheet (I use OpenOffice.org) is incredibly more capable and easier to use than the gradebook in one of those CMS products. I have no problem exporting my grades as a comma-separated values (csv) file and importing that into B********d, where each student can access their own grades and the FERPA requirements are met. You just need to make sure that the column headings have the same name as the assignments you created in the CMS software, or add new columns that can be defined arbitrarily.
Billie - October 5, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Steve, these programs do NOT allow students to have access to their grades. The benefit to the course management system programs is that students DO have access. Maybe I’m old-school enough to believe that students should be able to figure it out themselves (without my intervention) . . . but that’s just me. I grade on a simple enough scale that calculating 20% (assignment) out of 100% (course total) shouldn’t be too challenging.
Derek and Julie: I would LOVE to use Excel for all the reasons you mentioned, but I just simply do not know how. Perhaps this could be a followup ProfHacker post. (Hint, Hint.) Your comment, Derek, wasn’t snarky at all. I stopped using gradebook feature in various CMS because it was so complicated. I simply didn’t have the time to spend constructing the features I needed. Again, Excel would be an answer if I knew how to calculate needed formula.
As Mark noted, Gradekeeper has no design to become iPhone compatible. Having Palm synchronization ability was why I initially started using the program. That said, the programmer/owner of the program, Daniel Ethier, is a hands-on kind of guy. If you are a member of the Yahoo group or receive listserv emails, he’ll answer any question you might have about the program, its functions, and its quirks. Bill Gates won’t do that . . . nor will those corporations who provide course management systems.
Derek - October 5, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Not to be snarky (well, maybe a little bit), but this tech-savvy instructor chooses to keep track of grades in Excel rather than on my course management system because Excel gives me greater control over how to calculate grades. For instance, in Excel I can drop the three lowest assignments in a category fairly easily (using Excel’s “small” function), and I can also calculate a student’s final grade under two different schemes (perhaps one that puts more emphasis on the final exam and one that puts more emphasis on midterm exams) and take the better of the two.
Such grading systems might be possible in my course management system, but I haven’t figured out how to implement them. Excel makes it fairly easy.
Julie Meloni - October 5, 2009 at 6:47 pm
I use Excel too, and have a pretty good system worked out for myself including all the controls you mentioned. I think it falls under the “if it ain’t broke…” category. I know a ton of people who aren’t Excel savvy and would love to know other things like the ones above, but for me, I’m sticking with Excel.
Fun fact: students have a hard time figuring out how their English teacher can tell them their course grade at any point in the course to the thousandths. It really messes with their preconceived notions. :)
Steve Greenlaw - October 5, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Do either of these products allow students to access their grades without your intervention? That’s a useful feature.
Julie Meloni - October 5, 2009 at 7:16 pm
How did I just manage to make more work for myself? :) I do have a plan for “Using Google Spreadsheets,” so maybe I’ll just do a “How to use Spreadsheets When You’re Scared of Formulas” ? Ha ha. But seriously – what kinds of formulas or setups do you (all) want to see? I’ll write it.
Derek - October 5, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Billie, here’s how I used Excel to drop the lowest three assignments in a category and average the rest. Suppose you have 10 problem set grades for a student in cells B2 through K2 (that’s a horizontal range of 10 cells). You can find the average by adding those grades up and dividing by 10, right? That can be done by entering the following function in a new cell:
=sum(B2:K2)/10
If you want to drop the smallest of the 10 scores and average the rest, you can use Excel’s “small” function to identify the smallest number in the range, subtract it from the sum, then divide by 9 (instead of 10, since you’ve dropped an assignment):
=(sum(B2:K2)-small(B2:K2,1))/9
See that second parameter in the small function, the “,1″? That tells the small function to find the smallest number in the range. If you want the second smallest number, you use
small(B2:K2,2)
and so on for the third smallest. So to drop the three smallest and average the rest, you use
=(sum(B2:K2)-small(B2:K2,1)-small(B2:K2,2)-small(B2:K2,3))/7
this time dividing by 7 since you’ve dropped three of the 10 assignments.
A colleague of mine showed me this trick several years ago, and it’s given me a useful option for alternative grading schemes.
Derek - October 5, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Sorry the formatting on my last comment didn’t quite work. I tried using the “code” HTML tag in my comment, but it only worked half the way I thought it would. I think you can figure out where I was going, however.
George H. Williams - October 5, 2009 at 7:53 pm
I tweaked your tags a bit, Derek. Should be clearer formatting now.
Brian Croxall - October 5, 2009 at 8:16 pm
I’m a relative Excel novice, but have spent a lot of time getting better at it over the last year. It’s great fun to geek out over formulas that can tell you averages or compile all your attendance for you. Still, I’d love to see a Julie post on this subject.
As far as taking attendance goes, for those with an iPhone or iPod Touch, it’s worth noting the Attendance app. ProfHacker’s Jason Jones reviewed it for Macworld earlier this year. I’ve been using it this semester and while it took me a little while to get the hang of it, I’ve found it indispensable now that I’ve got a 4/4 with 100 students.
BKM - October 6, 2009 at 6:25 am
I have returned to teaching after a 10 year stint in the software industry. I have been trying to use WebCT’s gradebook feature. I cannot believe what a slow, clunky,poorly designed piece of you-know-what that it is. It is faster for me to compute grades with a CALCULATOR! I hear people talking about Moodle – is it any better?
Nels P. Highberg - October 6, 2009 at 10:57 am
Jim, I, too, use letter grades on papers and exams, but I convert those to the university grade scale before I put them in my Excel spreadsheet (A=4.00, A-=3.67, B+=3.33, etc.). Since it’s the university system, no one every questions it. I have to use Excel for grading because I’m not always on a computer connected to the internet, and my grading is pretty simple percentages (Essay One is 15% of final grade, Essay Two is 20%, etc.). I know there is a way to have Excel convert those letters to the numbers automatically, but I’ve been teaching so long that I don’t even think about it much anymore.
Jim Gordon - October 6, 2009 at 2:12 am
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any grade program that accommodates those of us who assign letter grades to tests and papers and then base course grades on those test and paper grades. It shouldn’t be that hard to create one. Many years ago I wrote a database routine that would do this.
Kim Middleton - October 6, 2009 at 8:07 am
Can I just put in a good word for Micrograde here? I’ve been using it for years. In the last few, it’s added functionality for letting students access their grades (full disclosure: I haven’t ever tried this), and it also prints out a handy-dandy grade sheet that I give to students at mid-term (and any time they really want to know where they are). It can also export grades for BBoard, etc.
Natalie Houston - October 6, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Derek, thanks for that example of the “small” function in Excel! The rest of my spreadsheet runs itself, but I didn’t know there was an easy way to drop x number of lowest grades (that part I’ve been going in manually to fix on a case by case basis.) You’ve just saved me at least an hour in December!
Matt Thomas - October 7, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Another vote for Gradekeeper even though a professor I used to TA for, whose grading system was so complicated it practically demanded I use something like Gradekeeper to keep things straight, once gave me a hard for using it, calling it “an unauthorized software program.” Especially recommend to those whose math skills have atrophied.
Jenifer - October 8, 2009 at 2:43 am
Engrade is a free online program, allows me to assign different weights to different categories (e.g., quizzes, tests, classwork), gives me the option of dropping the lowest grade in each category, lets students track their grades, and lets me print out progress reports.
If only it would read and grade all those essays for me…..
Mark Sample - October 8, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Thanks for the tip on the Attendance app. Maybe ProfHacker should do a whole feature on iPhone/Touch apps for teaching.
William Patrick Wend - November 12, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I’m using spreadsheets as well. Never really used them before so I thought this would be a good time to learn how. So far they have worked out really well. I do attendance and class rosters via spreadsheets as well.
William Patrick Wend - November 12, 2009 at 7:11 pm
I agree that students should be able to do number/number x 100 to figure out their grade, but I also give them their current point total whenever I send back a paper/quiz/etc so they cannot claim they don’t know it at any given time.