Understanding Grade Preparation

Student Records provides a variety of grade-related features. From institution and career-based rules to repeat schemes, grade rosters, grade change audits, and midterm deficiency analysis, you can use the different grade-related components to set up and manage grading processes.

Grade bases comprise individual grades, and grade schemes comprise grade bases. Typically, grade schemes are unique for each career in your institution. Grade schemes are not manually assigned to individual classes. Instead, the system dynamically matches grade schemes that are assigned to one career with classes of the same career.

Before you can grade students, you must define all possible grading schemes for all careers. You can have different grading schemes for different careers. Within each grading scheme, you define all valid grade bases, grades, and grade-related detail.

In addition, the system enables you to convert grades from one grading scheme to another. We call this grade-basis mapping feature our intelligent grade basis exception table. For example, when an undergraduate student enrolls in a graduate course (and the graduate course is associated with a graduate grading scheme), you might not want to grade the student according to the graduate grade scheme. Rather, you set up exception rules so that the system reroutes the student's grade scheme to the appropriate undergraduate grade scheme. On the Grading Basis Exception Rule page, you define all possible exception scenarios that the system must handle. For example, you can set up a rule that requires the system to convert a graduate grading scheme into an undergraduate grading scheme. This way, you ensure that grade schemes are appropriate for the student, based on the student's career (rather than the career of the class). Setting up exception rules is optional.

Finally, when all of your grade data is set up and instructors are ready to enter grades, you must generate the grade rosters. You can generate rosters on an individual class basis or in batch. Generating the rosters is a required, final step in making the rosters available for grade entry.