[phas-faculty_staff_others] Fwd: Using D2L for final grades and Early Intervention reporting

Mon Apr 22 17:47:48 CDT 2019

Please read the email below regarding the status of the D2L grade book and grading.

The TL;DR version (too long; didn’t read):  You will have the option to use D2L to submit your final grades for this semester.  Starting in the fall, we hope that early intervention will be able to use D2L as well.  Sometime in the future, probably fall, you will be required to use the D2L grade book for all classes.  And (surprise to me), academic advisors, athletic advisors, and success coaches will be able to view gradebooks for their students.

If you have any concerns after reading this, please let me know and I can bring those before the faculty senate next week.

Cheers,
Kurtis

Dr. Kurtis A. Williams
Associate Professor
Department of Physics & Astronomy
Texas A&M University-Commerce
kurtis.williams at tamuc.edu<mailto:kurtis.williams at tamuc.edu>
(903) 886-5516

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stephen Starnes <Stephen.Starnes at tamuc.edu<mailto:Stephen.Starnes at tamuc.edu>>
I met with Dr. Dobbs again recently regarding using D2L for early intervention (EI) reporting. Staff from Academic Technology were also at the meeting to provide an update.

As many of you know, Senate has been wanting for years to minimize the number of semester grade reports faculty have to do. Discussions were started over the last 2-3 years with Dr. Dobbs on methods to make this happen\. We were initially told D2L would be able to be used for this….and then we were told D2L could not be used for this. I am happy to report that Dr. Dobbs and Academic Technology (AT) have now figured out how to utilize D2L for this purpose. Sean Anderson may deserve some of the credit as well. After my e-mails earlier in the semester to all faculty regarding EI reporting stirred up a hornet’s nest, Sean offered to work with Dr. Dobbs and AT to lend his knowledge of D2L to make this type of reporting possible. So if you were involved Sean, many thanks to you.

 My recent conversation with AT to clarify some issues is below (AT responses are in green):

  1.  Faculty would like to be able to download grades so that we keep a record on our computer. This function is not currently available. Do you know when and if it will be?

The ability to download your grades for your own records will be available by the end of this semester if not earlier.

  1.  Will we all be, at some point in the near future, required to use D2L gradebook and push grades to Banner that way? If so, when?

My understanding is that faculty will indeed be required to use the gradebook for keeping track of grades.

  1.  Could advisors access attendance records if we created an “assignment” in the gradebook, worth no points, but serves as a place to record attendance for students and advisors to see?

I think the grade item just has to have some kind of “mark” in order to show up in class progress- but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be points.  I’ve seen pass/fail and satisfactory/unsatisfactory with some grade items, and these show up in the class progress area.

  1.  Who will be able to see into a faculty members gradebook? I assume:
     *   Success coaches- In planning stages
     *   Athletic advisors- This is already live
     *   College advisors
     *   TRIO program directors

Is this list correct? Are there others that I did not think of?- I believe that is indeed the staff to whom the class progress dashboard will be given, but it is ultimately up to the administration.  Those groups are the ones that have been under frequent consideration.

Is there FERPA concerns with who can access the gradebook? How will FERPA laws be taking into consideration so that those who should not see gradebook information, don’t?
                Everyone who will need access to the advisor/audit dashboard in D2L will be required to have proof that their FERPA training is current.  This is the current requirement for GAs/TAs and I believe it is necessary to require the same of any roles accessing grades information.  My guess is that advisors are already required to have that training anyway.  If they don’t have current FERPA, they don’t get the class progress/auditing dashboard.

If I understood everything correctly from the meeting, the summary that I will share with the Faculty Senate is:

  1.  We will be able to use D2L to push grades to Banner this semester and all semesters going forward. There will at some point be a button for export to SIS allowing faculty to export mid-term or final grades to Banner.
  2.  We do not have to use D2L to push grades to Banner this semester, but can if we want. We will still be able to input grades as usual.  Yes, that is my recommendation, that the new grades push feature be “opt in” at this juncture.
  3.  There will be a column where we can override the grading scheme of 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D, <60 = F.  Yes.
  4.  The only way to record attendance in D2L, at this point, is to create an “assignment” in the gradebook, worth no points, that we can record absences in so that students know what we have recorded for them.-Yes, but you can assign points for attendance if you want to, that is up to the professor.
  5.  We will start using D2L fall 2019 for EAB reporting in 1st and 2nd year courses in select courses. Courses not selected for a trial run using D2L will use the traditional route for EAB reporting.-  I believe the timeline is to be determined/finalized, possibly based on additional input.  I will defer to Dr. Dobbs on the timeline information and clarification.
  6.  Of the 2300 course shells spring 2019 only 1179 are using the D2L gradebook feature, which is ok since faculty were not required to use the feature.
  7.  Of 695 faculty using D2L, 494 use the gradebook (71%)……can you clarify this #6 and 7 numbers as they don’t seem to match. Maybe I’m not understanding the numbers correctly.

Some faculty are using for fully online but not yet for their face-to-face sections

  1.  Advisors will be able to see, using the dashboard/class progress tool:
     *   Grades (Any specific feedback given on these grades)
     *   Content Visits
     *   Discussions (Posts read, Threads created, Replies Posted)
     *   Assignments (Submissions, Late Submissions, Awaiting Grade)
     *   Quizzes (Quizzes Completed, Attempts Awaiting Grade)
     *   Login History (Last Accessed Course, Last Accessed System)

Is there anything else regarding this topic that I should send to faculty?

I think faculty will be very happy for D2L to be utilized in this manner. There may be some concern about what advisors are able to see (I don’t have any assignments except quizzes and exams so I am not sure what you mean by content visits and I’m not sure how they will feel about item 8c above, particularly if this means administrators reading at will discussion posts a faculty member makes. I don’t know enough about how faculty use this feature to know if they will care or not.

For content visits, the dashboard will indicate which module/topics in your course the specific student has accessed and for how long.  So if you have 16 modules in your course, the dashboard will indicate which of these the student visited and for how long.  This is probably more relevant for fully online classes where modules are often a primary means to present lecture content.

For discussions, advisors wouldn’t be able to read instructor posts from the dash board since they are mapped to individual students and not instructors.  The only instructor feedback advisors could see would be what was specifically given on a grade item in the gradebook or a paper.

Stephen

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.tamuc.edu/pipermail/phas-faculty_staff_others/attachments/20190422/63d6a958/attachment-0001.html>