UW-Madison's new e-Grading system, implemented in December, allows faculty to enter grades more efficiently and students to view highly anticipated final grades sooner, according to the Office of the Registrar.
Together with staff at UW-Madison's Division of Information Technology, the Registrar's office set out to design a tool to move UW-Madison away from the tedious practice of printing and filing paper grade forms, according to Terry Ruzicka, a communications official with the Office of the Registrar.
Faculty are now able to submit grades from any location with Internet access using a simple interface in which users log in and select a term and course to grade.
\It was meant to be an improvement in service for the faculty,"" Ruzicka said.
Ruzicka added many other universities have already begun using similar electronic grading systems.
""It's kind of in line with the national way of entering grades for students,"" Ruzicka said. ""It gets us in sync with peer institutions.""
Students may view grades via the online MyUW website shortly after instructors submit them.
""Once the instructor submits [a grade] to the registrar's office electronically, it's posted overnight and students can see it the next day,"" Ruzicka said.
Brian Rust, senior administrative program specialist for DoIT, said the system had to meet several basic requirements.
""In this case, namely, it has to be extremely secure and all faculty have to have access to it and it must inter-operate with the database or the directory of all of the students so that only those students who are in a particular class get grades for that class,"" Rust said.
""[With] the old system, you wrote it down on a sheet of paper and went in,"" Rust continued. ""It took maybe a week for it to get entered.""
Difficulties in designing the new system involved organizing grades with the student directory and database to ensure security of student grades, according to Rust.
Professor Charles Dill of the UW-Madison School of Music said e-Grading is an improvement from the paper system.
Dill added his reservations about the electronic system might have been unfounded.
""From teachers what I've heard was essentially what I experienced which was, 'gosh, that went much better than I thought it was going to,'"" Dill said.
