Week 2: Of grades and tools

Well one of the great tools in this course is snapgrades. It is one that is almost invisible to the participants, but very useful for me as a teacher. Let me tell you briefly why.

In previous online courses I have mainly used two grading tools: the one that comes with blackboard, our "learning management system" (LMS) at UOregon, or excel. I want to say I largely dislike the blackboard gradebook tool. Its biggest advantage is that students can check at will. The disadvantages in my opinion are that it is slow, difficult to make changes, and there are so many buttons and settings that it can be hard to navigate to find what you would like to do. Excel, on the other hand, is easy (once you have learned it). Once you have set up a spreadsheet for a class the way you want it is powerful and quick. However, there is not an easy way to share with students. I have to manage quite a bit of cutting and pasting and then emailing.

Then came snapgrades. Snapegrades is one of many tools out there that manage grades. They have a free version with limitations. The pay version, which I am using, is a bit of the best of both worlds of Blackboard and excel. It is pretty easy and quick to navigate, and I have a lot of control of how I let students see their scores. With one click, I can send out grades to everyone in the class. It frees up time for me to actually spend writing some comments to students, rather than cutting and pasting scores.

So my point is tools are out there, and it is a good time to experiment. While you might not be directly using snapgrades for inputting your work, my main goal is that you are exposed to how a tool like this works - at least from the student end - in case you need one someday.

Have a great week!
Robert