End of Semester Policies and Procedures
End of Semester Policies and Procedures
Here are a few reminders on the end of semester policies and procedures.
- Final grades are due to be entered by 4pm on the Tuesday after exam week.
- ** NEW ** In-house policy: Enter in DIS / Dissertation Hours / Honors Courses / Seminar Grades by the last day of exam week, on the Friday. Many people forget these grades, so we want to make sure they are entered timely and have time to contact you if there are issues.
- Final exams are kept for a year.
- We have a Department policy for incompletes that includes a form.
- There is a procedure for grade changes.
A few of us share the duties regarding questions about undergraduate courses:
- TAs should refer to the End of Semester procedures for TAs sent out by the Advanced GTA Coordinator and should communicate directly with the Advanced GTA Coordinator (Courtney).
- Courses below Calculus 1 (ie Business Calculus and lower) will be handled by the Director of Basic Math (Pene).
- Courses for Calculus 1 and above, including graduate courses, will be handled by the Associate Chair for Academic Affairs (Monica).
- Postdocs leaving will give their final exams and gradebooks from the last year to the Postdoc Coordinator (Tom). Other questions should be directed to the Associate Chair for Academic Affairs.
Do not hesitate to ask questions!
Topics Covered:
- Final Grades, including DIS, Seminars, etc.
- Keep Final Exams for a Year
- Incompletes
- Canvas Gradebook Tips
- Grade Changes
- Looking Ahead to the Next Semester
- Final Grades
- Keep Final Exams for a Year
- Incompletes
- Canvas Gradebook Tips
- You should keep a separate document outside of Canvas that records your student grades. You can either download your Canvas grades or keep a separate spreadsheet/document.
- Canvas grades are unofficial. To minimize student questions about grades, your Canvas gradebook should be as accurate as possible.
- Are all assignments organized in the correct group and weighted correctly under assignments? Note that your total weighting should not exceed 100.
- Are all dashes in the gradebook changed to 0's? Or if it is excused marked with EX? By default, Canvas ignores grades with dashes so these all need to have a grade entered.
- Are all assignments that are to be included in the course grade published and posted?
- If you are dropping the lowest grade in one of the groups, use the "rule" in the canvas assignments group to drop the lowest grade. You Edit the group to enter the rule.
- In rare circumstances the final course grade may depend on replacing a grade with the final exam grade. Our recommendation is to not replace the grade in Canvas, but to use a formula in excel to correctly reflect the change. This means the grade in Canvas is not going to reflect the correct grade. In this case that is ok as long as Canvas reflects the lowest possible grade.
- Our recommendation is that your Canvas course setting should NOT have a course grading scheme enabled and it should be hiding grade distributions. Double check this in Settings. If you see letter grades in your gradebook, then you have the settings wrong.
- Grade Change Requests
- Looking Ahead to the Next Semester
- Do not respond to students saying you would love for them to be in your class (students will take this to mean that they can be in your class and show your email to some other departmental advisor).
- Be neutral and tell students they need to email the Math advisors (math-advisor@fsu.edu).
- We have class size capacity limits on all our Calculus classes. There is increasing pressure from the "higher ups" to increase these limits due to classes being full, so it is important that students are referred to the Math advisors.
- Only the Math advisors have the superpower to add students to a class and they will not necessarily add students because you request it. Do not promise (or imply) a student will get a seat in your class. Other students probably have priority - only the Math advisors know. Many classes have many students trying to get in.
Final Grades are due to be entered by 4pm on the Tuesday after exam week.
** NEW ** In-house policy: Enter in DIS / Dissertation Hours / Honors Courses / Seminar Grades by the last day of exam week on Friday. Many people forget these grades, so we want to make sure they are entered timely and have time to contact you if there are issues.
The Department gets charged a late fee of $10 per student for grades that are not entered on time. If for some reason you do not think you will be able to enter your grades on time, please let one of us know as soon as possible! Students will be able to see their final grades the day after grades are due. For new faculty (or those who have forgotten), here is a document on how to enter in final grades: https://sc.my.fsu.edu/faculty/how/use-grade-rosters-faculty-center
University policy requires that final exams (or similar final assessment) are to be kept for a year. If the final was written on paper, you should keep the papers for a year; in particular do not give the papers back to the students. It is ok to show a student the graded paper on request, and ok if they photograph it or you give them a copy for reference. Instructors who will be leaving the Department before a year is up should arrange to transfer the final papers, zip file of graded exams, or location of exams on your Canvas site, to a colleague for retention, and let us know (Advanced GTA Coordinator for TAs, Postdoc Coordinator for postdocs, Director of Basic Math for all courses below Calc 1, Associate Chair for Academic Affairs for Calc 1 and above).
Many students will ask for an incomplete, but incompletes are rare. Students missing more than just the final exam in an undergraduate course usually need to see the Dean about a W or WD. All other coursework (tests, assignments, etc.) should be completed and assigned a grade before considering an incomplete grade for a course.
An incomplete means that the student has an excusable reason for missing the final, and that it can be rescheduled for early in the next term. It also means that the student should be in good standing and earning a passing grade coming into the final exam. The incomplete should not be a way to delay or rescue an F or excuse earlier course material. Nor is an incomplete a free pass to take a portion of the class (such as a midterm) over again for free. An incomplete is not allowed as a way of getting additional time to study for the final or other tests.
For undergraduate math courses, the Department has a form for instructors to fill out for all incompletes. The form asks for exactly what is missing (normally, just the final), and a date by which the missing material must be completed. The form can be obtained from the Director of Basic Math for all courses below Calc 1, and from the Associate Chair for Academic Affairs for Calc 1 and above.
When you assign an incomplete grade on your grade roster, you will be prompted to enter the following: what grade would the student get if all uncompleted scores were zero (i.e. if the student did nothing further), and a date for the incomplete to expire and default to the specified grade. In most cases the grade would be an F (maybe a D), and it should expire at the end of the following semester.
When it comes time to updating an "I" or "NG" grade, you can do this yourself using the online submission tool. Using this tool bypasses the need for department and dean's office approval. See https://sc.my.fsu.edu/faculty/how/request-grade-change.
We are happy to discuss individual cases.
Make sure your Canvas grade book is accurately reflecting the students' current grades.
Here are some suggestions to check regarding your Canvas gradebook:
TAs who need to submit a grade change for a student need to coordinate with the Graduate Teaching Coordinator. The Coordinator may refer you to the Associate Chair for Academic Affairs.
Most Calculus, Linear Algebra and ODE classes will be full. Many other undergraduate classes will be full or close to full. If students email you asking if they can be in your class, refer them to math-advisor@fsu.edu. Some reminders:
I hope everyone had a great semester! As always, do not hesitate to reach out with questions.