Success story
At Bond University grade submission time reduced from 2.5 hrs to 15 min.
Background
As Australia’s first private non-profit university, Bond University has been providing tertiary education to both domestic and international students since 1989. The Gold Coast-based university is currently host to around 4,000 students across its faculties of Business, Law, Health Science and Medicine, and Society and Design.
Challenge
Bond University’s academic timetable is built around three teaching periods (known as trimesters) per year. While this structure does provide many educational benefits, one drawback surfaced when it comes to grading. The shorter trimesters in quick succession throughout the year meant that course instructors had less turnaround time for their grading, and they were pressed for the amount of time they needed to dedicate to grade submission and approval.
Not only that, but the sheer number of steps involved in the university’s grading methods meant that there was a high risk of human error when it came to accuracy and calculations, despite the stringent processes in place to ensure against this. On the whole, grade submission required course instructors to spend a considerable amount of time on meticulously checking every single grade to make sure that what they were submitting was completely accurate.
Solution
Bond University understood that being adaptive and responsive to the needs of students is becoming more and more important in today’s changing landscape. As such, they needed a solution to the problem – the complicated and time-consuming grade calculation, submission, and approval.
The university turned to Grade Matter to solve that problem, implementing the grade-calculating application in a bid to not only dramatically improve their grading process but also as a central repository for grades, and to ensure consistency across the operations of the faculties. The application was integrated into Bond’s existing Blackboard Ultra Learning Management System, StudentOne Student Information System, and Akari Curriculum Management System.
Results
Uphold grading integrity
Grade Matter helped to uphold Bond’s grading integrity by ensuring that there was fairness in course instructors’ marking, assisted by Grade Matter’s ability to require a justification be submitted when certain grades are changed. This feature also allowed for the ability to audit grade changes. Should a grade review request come through (whether from a student, member of the Faculty Assessment Board, or any other grade reviewer), Grade Matter had recorded every grade change and accompanying comment to provide accurate evidence to support the grade.
Improved grade submission and approval productivity
For the course instructors, Grade Matter also drastically improved their productivity by allowing for continuous delivery of grades into the application. Rather than having to manually calculate all their students’ grades in a spreadsheet at the end of the trimester, instructors could simply import the assessment marks from Blackboard Ultra into Grade Matter and the application automatically calculated the final results for them.
Reduced risk of errors
On top of these benefits, Grade Matter offered Bond University greater assurance that the risk of error was reduced, and that grade moderation has been effectively managed and carried out.
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- Dr Daniel Brennan, Assistant Professor in the Transformation CoLab at Bond University:
“The tricky administration around submitting final grades has always been stressful. The process of transferring data from one source to another, analysing the grades, and submitting it for final approval leaves many gaps for errors.
“Consequently, it’s a very time-consuming process to ensure that each student gets the right grades; I teach courses with large enrolments, and the traditional grading system took around two and a half to five hours to prepare.
“With the Grade Matter program, that time has been reduced from 2.5 hours to 15 minutes, and all of the stress and triple-checking for errors has disappeared.
“Grade Matter allows me to instantly begin analysing the grade data and checking over students sitting on borderline or questionable grades. I’m especially grateful for the insightful presentation of grade data that makes it so clear how students have performed. In Board of Examiners meetings, the program really shines as it allows the committee to investigate the grades with intuitive display options.
“Grades submission used to be a burden on my time and a stress-inducing procedure. Now, with Grade Matter, the process is automatic and enables me to focus on student welfare rather than data entry.”