GRADE ENTRY FAQ
- When will the electronic grade entry system open?
The electronic grade entry system opens for first/third quarter and first trimester courses one day before classes end.
The electronic grade entry system opens for second trimester courses one day after drop/add ends.
The electronic grade entry system opens for full-semester and second/fourth quarter courses by the last day of classes.
- What is the deadline to submit final grades?
The deadline to submit final grades each semester is posted on the academic calendar.
- I need help. How can i get assistance with the electronic grade entry system?
You may contact the Registrar's Office at (860) 685-2810 during normal business hours, Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 4:30pm.
If you encounter a technical problem with the portfolio system outside of business hours, please send an email to registrar@wesleyan.edu or click on "Contact the Registrar's Office" at the top of the grade roster page. A Registrar's staff member will get back to you as soon as possible, during normal business hours.
If you are a Graduate Liberal Studies instructor, please contact masters@wesleyan.edu with questions.
- Can I ask my department/program administrative assistant or department secretary to enter grades for me?
No. Department and program administrative assistants have not been given access to the grade entry system and are not expected to enter grades. To protect the security of the system, we are asking that you do not give your password to anyone. Therefore, administrative assistants should never have access to your password.
- How do I access my grade rosters?
To access your grade rosters, log in to your WesPortal. Click on Course Management. The page that opens will have a drop-down menu at the top of the page. Select the current term and a course by using the drop-down menus at the top of the page.
There are five links on this page for viewing information: Enrollment Requests, Class Totals, Class Enrollment, Grade Roster, and Change of Grade. Click on Grade Roster. It is important to note that Grade Roster is a dynamic link that will only appear when the electronic grade entry system is open. If you do not see the Grade Roster link, please make sure that it is after the date that grade entry was scheduled to open and that you have selected the correct semester (or quarter) and course.
The first time that you link to your grade rosters, you will be directed to a page where you will be asked to comply with FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) policies.
- A course I am teaching is not appearing in the drop-down menu for the current semester. What do I do?
If you cannot see one of your courses, contact your department or program administrative assistant to make sure that the Registrar's Office has you correctly listed as the instructor in the database. This can be confirmed by going to WesMaps. If you are not listed as the instructor, the administrative assistant should then contact the Registrar's Office to ask that a correction be made.
- How do I assign grades?
A grade must be reported for every student whose name appears on the grade roster. Gray rows indicate students who have not been assigned grades. You assign a grade by using the drop-down menu which appears next to the student's name in the grade column. You may also type in the first letter of the grade value you want to assign, which will act as a shortcut to that section of the drop-down menu. The values in the drop-down menu correspond to the grading mode for the course or, if the course is student option, to the grading mode that the student elected.
A grade key for each grading mode appears at the top of the roster, to the left. Click on the key for an explanation of each grade value.
After assigning a grade to a student, you can choose to save your work, post the grade to the Registrar's Office, or continue working with the grade roster. We encourage you to save your work often. If you assign a grade lower than C- or an unsatisfactory grade, you will be required to submit a Dean's Unsatisfactory Report. You can save your grades without submitting these reports, but you must submit the reports before you can post the grades to the Registrar's Office.
If a student has an approved incomplete, the roster will then include incomplete provisional grades. You will need to report the provisional grade, which is the grade the student will receive if NO further work is submitted. The final grade cannot be lower than the provided provisional grade.
- How do I save or post grades?
At the top of the grade roster, in the center, you will see a drop-down menu with a submit button next to it. Use the drop-down menu to select either save or post and then hit the submit button. You will be directed to a confirmation page where you will be asked to confirm the grades that you are saving or posting. Saving the grades saves your progress, but will not post them to students' records. You must select "POST GRADES" when you are ready to finalize the grades.
- What is the difference between saving and posting grades?
Saved grades are temporarily stored so that you can return to the grade roster at a later date and continue working. Grades that have been saved are not known to the Registrar's Office and have not been posted to the student's record. Additionally, grades that have been saved can be changed at a later date without submitting a change of grade form.
Grades that have been saved will appear as yellow or red rows. Yellow rows indicate that the grade is ready to be posted. Red rows indicate that a Dean's Unsatisfactory Report still needs to be submitted for the student. A red row will not change to yellow until the report has been submitted and you have refreshed the screen. Once the grade has been posted to the Registrar's Office, the row will change to white.
Once you post grades, the data is sent to the Registrar's Office and becomes part of the student's permanent record. Posted grades can only be changed by submitting a change of grade form and in accordance with the Academic Regulations. Grades that have been posted appear as white rows and the drop-down menu in the grade column disappears.
- How can I sort the grade roster?
The default sort option for your grade roster is in last name order. If you wish to re-sort your roster by WesId or Class Year, click on the hyperlink heading in that column. The Class Year sort option is particularly useful if you need to post grades for seniors or graduate students prior to posting the rest of your grade roster.
You may also sort your grade roster by Grade so that any grades that have not been entered sort to the top of the roster.
Please be aware that if you are working in the grade roster and your reorder the page by class, grade, name, or WesId without first saving the grades you have entered, you will lose your work. You may be able to recover the data by hitting the "back" button but we advise you to save your work before you reorder the page.
- What about incomplete grades? How do I record an incomplete grade?
Per Academic Regulations:
All the work of a course must be completed and submitted to the instructor by the last day of classes. The only exceptions to this are final examinations and, in courses without a registrar-scheduled final examination, significant assignments such as final take-home exams, semester-long projects, and term papers, which must be due no sooner than the first day, and no later than the last day, of the exam period, and preferably at the time slot reserved for the registrar-scheduled examination. A student who is unable to meet these deadlines, for the reasons listed below, may request the permission of the instructor to meet the requirement no later than 30 days after the last day of exams. If the instructor grants the extension, an Incomplete Provisional grade must be submitted to the registrar at the time grades are due. If the student does not submit the outstanding work in the course by the deadline, the provisional grade will become the final grade. Once the work is submitted, the professor should evaluate the work and use the "Change of Grade" link to submit a final grade, which cannot be lower than the provisional grade.
Any provisional incomplete grades remaining by the end of the drop/add period of the subsequent semester will be converted to the provisional final grade by the Office of the Registrar.
A student may receive up to two incompletes per semester by this method. To receive incompletes in more than two courses, the student must petition his or her class dean. The petition can be granted only on grounds of illness, family crisis, or other extraordinary circumstances. To petition for a brief extension of the Incomplete deadline, based on these same criteria, students must make a request to their class dean. The class dean will make the decision about whether the petition will be granted in consultation with the Vice President for Student Affairs and the course instructor.
Incompletes will not be granted for summer or winter sessions. Rare exceptions to this policy may be made in the case of serious emergencies, by petitioning the class dean. For the impact of incompletes on students’ records for the purposes of academic review, students should consult their class dean. Students on strict probation will not be allowed to receive incompletes without the prior approval of their class dean.
Students who started at Wesleyan prior to Fall 2018 can petition for an extension of the incomplete deadline based on the policy that was in place in 2017.
- A student missed the final exam with my permission and will be taking it at a later date. How do I record that on the grade roster?
When a student misses the final exam with permission from the instructor, the professor can choose to grant an incomplete and follow the steps for incompletes noted above.
- How do I record a deferred grade for a student who is working on his/her senior thesis?
The symbol "X" should be awarded to a student who cannot complete a thesis project for a Senior Thesis Tutorial, listed as 409 or 410, by the end of the semester. The "X" denotes that a grade will be recorded once the thesis has been completed.
- Why can't I record a grade of W (withdrawal)? I thought the student withdrew from my course.
A "W" grade will appear in the grade column of the roster if a student has officially withdrawn from your course. Students must submit withdrawal slips to the Registrar's Office by the tenth week of the semester to withdraw from a course. If you believe that a student has stopped attending your course because it was his/her intent to withdraw, please assign the student a grade of PWD (Problem: Thought Student Withdrew).
- What should I do if a student's name is not appearing on the grade roster?
If a student's name does not appear on the grade roster, the student has not registered for the course through the Registrar's Office and no grade can be recorded. If you wish, you can send an email to registrar@wesleyan.edu or click "Contact the Registrar's Office" at the top of the grade roster page to inform the Registrar's Office that the student has been attending the course. The student must contact his/her class dean and petition for a "late add."
- What should I do if a student never attended my course and is appearing on my grade roster?
If a student has never attended your course and is appearing on your grade roster, please assign a DNA (Did Not Attend) grade.
- I teach a course with multiple sections. A student is appearing on my roster but he/she is in another instructor's section. What should I do?
If a student is in the wrong section of the course, please assign a grade of PWS (Problem: Student in wrong section).
- I'm unable to assign a grade due to an honor board violation. What do I record?
Please assign a grade of PHB (Problem: Honor Board Violation).
- How do I indicate that a student audited my course, so that the notation can appear on the transcript?
To indicate that a student has audited a course, please send an email to registrar@wesleyan.edu or click "Contact the Registrar's Office" at the top of the grade roster page. Include the course that the student audited, the student's name and class year, and if possible, the student's WesID. If they are already on your roster as an auditor, enter an AU grade.
- How do I fill out a dean's unsatisfactory grade report?
For every grade lower than a C- or a grade of U, you must complete a Dean's Unsatisfactory Grade Report. Next to the student's name, click "Create" in the Dean's Unsatisfactory Grade Report column, which is located to the right of the grade column. A window will pop up with the Unsatisfactory Grade Report for that student. After filling out the form, click "Submit." The hyperlink will change from "Create" to "Filed" once you have posted your grades or once you refresh the screen.
Dean's Unsatisfactory Grade Reports are reviewed by the appropriate class dean. The student does not receive a copy of this report.
- When I attempt to fill out a dean's unsatisfactory grade report by clicking on "create", nothing happens. Why can't I see this form?
The Dean's Unsatisfactory Grade Report is a pop-up. If your computer has Pop-up Blocking software, you may need to turn off the pop-up blocking feature entirely or specifically allow pop-ups from the electronic portfolio/grade entry web pages. Additionally, pressing and holding the CTRL-key as you mouse click can defeat some pop-up blocking software.
- I submitted dean's unsatisfactory grade reports and now I don't see an option to post grades. Help!
Once you have submitted Dean's Unsatisfactory Grade Reports, you must refresh the screen using the Refresh link at the top of the roster to the right. After refreshing the screen, you will notice that the red rows have turned to yellow, the "create" link for the Dean's Unsatisfactory Grade Report has been updated to "filed," and the option to post has reappeared in the drop-down at the top of the roster.
- How do I fill out a pass/fail evaluation?
Click "Create" in the Pass/Fail Evaluation column, which will be located to the far right of the Dean's Unsatisfactory Report column if the student took the course with a CR/U grading option. A window will pop up with the Pass/Fail Evaluation for that student. After filling out the form, click "Submit." The hyperlink will change from "Create" to "Filed" once you have saved your grades or, if the grade was already saved, once you refresh the screen.
Please note that the Pass/Fail Evaluation is a pop-up. If your computer has Pop-up Blocking software, you may need to turn off the pop-up blocking feature entirely or specifically allow pop-ups from the electronic portfolio/grade entry web pages. Additionally, pressing and holding the CTRL-key as you mouse click can defeat some pop-up blocking software.
Pass/Fail evaluations are sent as an email to the student. A paper copy is also generated by the Registrar's Office and becomes part of the student's permanent record. Pass/Fail evaluations are sent out with the transcript upon student request.
- Why don't I see a submit button on the unsatisfactory grade report or the pass/fail evaluation pop-up box?
Some browsers do not allow you to view the entire window of a pop-up. In the top right-hand corner of the pop-up window there are three small boxes in a row. The first box has a line in it, the second box has one or more small boxes within it, and the third box contains an X. Click on the second box (which contains one or more small boxes) and this will open up the window (maximize it) to allow you to view the submit button.
- I saved my grades and then discovered an error. How do I correct the grade?
If you saved your grades but did not post them to the Registrar's Office and later discovered an error, you can correct the grade simply by changing the grade on the drop-down menu and saving your work again.
- I posted my grades to the registrar's office and now I've discovered an error. How do i correct a grade that has been posted?
Grades that have been posted to the Registrar's Office require an electronic Change of Grade form. Changes to grades will only be accepted if they are submitted on a Change of Grade form. To electronically submit a change of grade, make sure that you are working with the correct semester and course and click on the Change of Grade link (which appears next to the Grade Roster link on the Course Management page). Next, select the "create" hyperlink that appears next to the student's name in the Change of Grade column. If a "create" link is not appearing, then a grade has not been posted for that student. A window will open up with the Change of Grade form. Once you have completed the form, select Submit. Once the Change of Grade form has been reviewed by the Registrar's Office (for undergraduates) or the Graduate Office (for graduate students), it will be posted to the student's record. Be sure to review the Academic Regulations regarding submitting a change of grade.
- Why don't I see a submit button on the change of grade pop-up box?
Some browsers do not allow you to view the entire window of a pop-up box. In the top right-hand corner of the pop-up window there are three small boxes in a row. The first box has a line in it, the second box has one or more small boxes within it, and the third box contains an X. Click on the second box (which contains one or more small boxes) and this will open up the window (maximize it) to allow you to view the submit button.