No, Grade Matter works in conjunction with the Learning Management System Gradebook.

After installing Grade Matter, teaching staff continue to use the Learning Management System to teach their courses and deliver their assessments exactly as they were before. They can use any of the tools available in the Learning Management System, including external LTI tools, to deliver and mark the assessments.

At the end of the teaching period, Grade Matter will use the individual assessment marks from the Learning Management System Gradebook to calculate a final mark and, ultimately, a final grade.

Grade Matter doesn’t use your Learning Management System’s total calculator. Instead the final mark is calculated by Grade Matter using the approved assessment weights from your official source of curriculum data, ensuring that the final mark is calculated exactly as expected.

However, you may wish to use calculations and totals for components of the mark. For example, the course may contain a single assessment in the curriculum data that comprises ten weekly quizzes. You can use these tools in the Learning Management System to produce a result for the “quizzes” assessment which is then utilised by Grade Matter in the calculation of the final mark.

If you deliver an assessment entirely outside of the Learning Management System, then the marks must be entered into the Learning Management System gradebook so they can be used in Grade Matter when calculating the final result.

This is no different from having to enter the marks by hand into a spreadsheet or other system with the existing, more manual processes.

Additionally, entering all marks for all assessments into the Learning Management System creates a central point of truth for all assessment marks and helps provide a consistent student experience.

No, Grade Matter doesn’t change or modify any data in the Learning Management System. The Learning Management System gradebook is used as a source of read-only assessment marks. For more information, see Does Grade Matter replace the Learning Management System gradebook?

Yes, Grade Matter’s flexible grading schemas can be configured to fail students who have failed assessments that are marked as hurdles in the official curriculum data.

Yes, Grade Matter supports your Learning Management System’s native exemption functionality. There are different scenarios that are handled differently:

1. When a student is exempted from an entire assessment the weights of the remaining assessments are adjusted to account for the exemption.

2. When a student is exempted from a component of an assessment, the assessment remains weighted the same and the components that make up the assessment are adjusted to account for the exemption.

Yes, Grade Matter supports competency based assessments in both graded and ungraded courses.

In the context of a graded course, a competency based assessment is simply a hurdle assessment with zero weight.

In the context of an ungraded (competency based) course, all components have zero weight and calculation of a final mark is skipped but a final grade is assigned.

Grade Matter pulls data from all data sources on-demand meaning that data is as up-to-date as possible. 

However, Grade Matter has some mechanisms in place to ensure that it doesn’t cause unnecessary load on the systems providing it with data. If data has been recently refreshed by Grade Matter, then it will skip refreshing the data again.

Some users may want to modify data in the Learning Management System while using Grade Matter and have these modifications show up immediately in Grade Matter. For example, perhaps an instructor spots a mistake in an assessment mark and chooses to correct it immediately in the Learning Management System gradebook. For this scenario, Grade Matter offers a “reimport” button which directs Grade Matter to refetch the latest data from the external systems.

Users can override the result calculated by Grade Matter. This is not only supported by Grade Matter, but expected. For most scenarios, Grade Matter’s flexible grading schemas allow for building rules and restrictions around alternate grades to meet the institution’s grading policies. 

Some grades may be assigned under exceptional circumstances which cannot have rules associated, such as academic misconduct. The schema can be configured to allow these grades to be assigned to any student, but require a justification from the user.

Assessments that have not been submitted are considered to be failed when Grade Matter is calculating a final mark.

If a student has not submitted for an allowable reason, then the user can override their grade with an appropriate grade as configured in the institution’s grading schema.

To assist with this process, Grade Matter automatically flags all students who have not submitted at least one assessment and allows the user to filter current view to only these students.

The institution can use the grading schema configuration to require the user to justify this change, if desired.

Yes, Grade Matter’s flexible grading schemas can be configured to allow for multiple grades to be applicable for any given mark including the ability to be able to configure which grade is assigned by default.

For example, perhaps your institution will create a schema where a mark less than 50 is assigned a Fail, but if a student gets a mark greater than or equal to 47 and less than 50 they are eligible for a Conceded Pass.

In some circumstances a mark will not make sense in the context of a particular grade. Grade Matter’s flexible grading schemas can be configured to remove the final mark when a specific grade is assigned.

Yes, Grade Matter’s flexible grading schemas allow different configurations for different roles. For example, perhaps an instructor is not allowed to assign a grade, or is required to justify the change, but the approval board is allowed to assign the grade, or isn’t required to justify the change.

Yes, Grade Matter supports cross-listing/merging both within the Learning Management System and within your Learning Management System integration service.

Where more than one offering is merged into a single course, Grade Matter will show you one tab for each offering.

No, offerings can be submitted independently or in groups. 

Grade Matter displays all offerings grouped together by the parent course, but this is only for convenience.

For example, if one of the offerings has a slightly different course schedule for whatever reason, then the user may prepare all the grades for all the other offerings and submit them for approval, then return to Grade Matter at a later time to complete the calculation and submission for the final offering.

No, all offerings in Grade Matter are completely independent of each other, and can have different assessments, and complete the submission workflow at different times.

For convenience, Grade Matter shows cross-listed/merged offerings grouped together by the parent course, but each offering has its own set of assessments from the curriculum data and its own mapping of the assessments to the Learning Management System.

Yes, Grade Matter offers a number of sorting and filtering options.

One of the key features of Grade Matter is the flag system. This system flags students who meet specific criteria that may be of interest to the user, such as students who have failed an assessment, or students who are on the borderline of another grade. Grade Matter allows the user to filter on these flags as well as other things such as final grade.

Users can also sort the list of students by name, student number, mark or grade.

Yes, Grade Matter is developed using “Responsive Design” principles that mean it can be used on devices of all sizes.

Grade Matter has two primary roles, reviewer and approver. The reviewer (who is typically the course instructor/coordinator) is to review the marks and grades calculated by Grade Matter, make any necessary adjustments and comments and submit for approval.

The approver (who is typically an administrative assistant present at the faculty review board meeting) is responsible for ensuring that the grades meet the institution’s policies, looks for anomalies, makes appropriate adjustments and adds comments before providing final approval for submission to the Student Information System.

No, students do not need to have access to Grade Matter. 

Grade Matter replaces your institution’s existing grade calculation, submission and approval system. Once the final mark and grade is approved it is exported from Grade Matter and imported into the Student Information System to be released to students exactly as would have occurred prior to implementing Grade Matter.

When implementing Grade Matter:

• the Learning Management System remains the point of truth for all assessment marks 

• the Student Information System remains the point of truth for final marks and grades; and

• the Curriculum Management System remains the point of truth for assessment metadata such as weightings.

Grade Matter replaces your institution’s existing grade calculation, submission and approval system and therefore becomes the point of truth for the history of the student’s final mark and grade from calculation through to approval.

No, once grades have been submitted for approval, no changes can be made by the course staff including changes to assessment marks in the Learning Management System.

If changes need to be made to the results, the approver must first reject the grades, returning control to the course staff.

During an approval board meeting, typically one administrative staff member, acting on behalf of the chair of the committee will display Grade Matter on a large display (if the meeting is in person) or with screen sharing (if the meeting is virtual). 

The committee will work their way through each offering for the academic unit and teaching period, making adjustments, comments and approving or rejecting as they go.

Grade Matter keeps a full history of all assessment marks, calculations, comments, adjustments, justifications and workflow state changes.

If a student contests a grade, university staff can use Grade Matter to review a complete timeline of everything that happened during the calculation, submission and approval of the grade. Uncommon adjustments and grades can be configured to require a justification, ensuring that it is easy to see the thought process and decisions that went into arriving at the student’s grade.

Yes, Grade Matter’s Admin UI allows you to configure the nomenclature/terminology to align with your institution’s to ensure the system is as clear and simple for staff as possible. For example, your institution may not use the word Course, but instead use an alternative such as Subject or Unit.

Grade Matter makes all approved grades available via a web service where grades can be requested in either a JSON or CSV format.

The JSON format is intended to be used by integration services which will extract, transform and load (ETL) the data into other systems. Typically this will be the Student Information System, but could also be other systems as well.

The CSV format can be configured to output spreadsheets in the same format that your existing process is expecting. An integration process can download the spreadsheets and place them into a network drive ready to be imported into the Student Information System.

To help manage the process, there are some additional web services available. A web service is available to the integration process to get a list of which offerings have not yet been exported, and another is available for the service to record the offering as successfully exported.

Typically, the process will look like this:

1. Get a list of offerings that have been approved, but not exported.

2. For each offering that has not been exported:

   • Export the grades and load them into the destination

   • Mark the offering as exported

This process ensures that offerings are not marked as exported until they have been successfully loaded, providing fault tolerance.

Yes, Grade Matter is implemented as a SaaS solution.

There are two primary ways that Grade Matter integrates with your institution’s systems.

Grade Matter connects into your Learning Management System using LTI and the Learning Management System’s web services.

Connecting to your Student Information System and curriculum data is done via an integration adapter built on your institution’s data integration platform of choice. This approach allows for maximum flexibility and ensures that Grade Matter can fit your institution’s needs.

Grade Matter is a SaaS solution, however each client’s data is stored isolated from each other.