Grade Submission Information

• Instructions - Midterm Grade Entry
• Instructions - Faculty Grade Upload Option

Instructions - Midterm Grade Entry

Deadline for submission of midterm grades is MIDNIGHT, Thursday, October 15, 2009.

Web Browser:

You should have the most up-to-date web browser to access Faculty Access. For PC users, minimum requirement: Netscape 6.01 or Internet Explorer 5.0. For Mac users: Browser incompatibility--Due to a software incompability between our web server and the Internet 5.x browser on the Mac, this website will not run in a secure manner. Please use another browser besides Internet Explorer.

Suggested Browsers:

Camino: caminobrowser.org
Mozilla: mozilla.org
Firefox: mozilla.org
Safari: apple.com

Entry Instructions

1. Go to Virginia Tech Home Page; click on Faculty & Staff (left hand column); Quicklinks for Faculty & Staff opens; Click on "Faculty Access/Hokie SPA"; Virginia Tech Information Gateway page appears.
2. Enter your PID and password; contact 4-HELP if you need your password reset; choose Faculty Access.
3. Click on Faculty Grade Sheet Menu; click on "MIDTERM GRADE ENTRY WORKSHEET"
4. You will be required to enter your employee identification number; click submit.
5. Choose appropriate course from list displayed; click submit CRN.

NOTE: You must be the faculty member of record or have special departmental access for update of grades. Two entry choices are available: direct entry via the web worksheet or upload of an external grades file.

Direct Entry Via the Web instructions

1. Tab to the "Grade" Column of the first student on your grade worklist.
2. Using the pull down arrow, select the appropriate grade choice.
3. Click on "submit grades" (bottom of each page).
4. You will receive message at the top of your worklist "Your grades entries were saved successfully" after each click on "submit grades".
5. You are done! If you need to alter a grade already submitted, you may do so until the deadline for submission of grades; simply return to the worklist, alter grade, and click submit again.

Upload of an External Grades File

(see Faculty Grade Upload Instructions)

By clicking on "Printable Grade Sheets" you can also print your grade sheets as of the date you entered the grades.

Appropriate Grades and Other Grade Definitions

• Midterm grading is intended to provide early assessment of "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory" progress for all entering freshmen and transfer students during the fall semester as required by Policy Memorandum No. 107.
• Per Policy, "C" or better is satisfactory and "C-" and below is unsatisfactory. Assign either a "C" for satisfactory or an "F" for unsatisfactory. If you assign grades other than C or F, the process will convert based upon the aforementioned definition.
• Letter grades will be converted in processing to S+, Satisfactory or U, Unsatisfactory.

Registration Problems

First time freshman and/or transfer students attending your class but not on your work list at the time of the submission of your grades should be directed to their academic dean.

Posting of Midterm Grades

Students should be directed to HOKIE SPA for viewing of their midterm grades. Grades are available for viewing approximately 24 hours after the submission deadline. (NOTE: students will view satisfactory and unsatisfactory--not letter grades submitted). As a reminder, faculty may not post grades in a grade-listing format using any portion of the student identification number or name.

For options on posting grades, visit http://www.registrar.vt.edu/faculty_staff/grade_posting.php

Instructions - Faculty Grade Upload Option

The faculty grade upload option is available in Faculty Access from the Midterm Grade Worksheet.

This function requires a comma delimited file to exist on your PC/Mac containing the student id in the first column and the grade in the second column (additional columns will be ignored).

It is recommended that the file name include the class CRN so that the correct grades will be uploaded for that class.

After the file is complete and the grades are ready for upload, use the following steps to complete the process. NOTE: If you submit grades for students who are not "first time freshmen or first time transfers", the grades will be ignored during processing.

In Faculty Access, when you select Midterm Grades, be sure to select the correct term and CRN for the file that you wish to upload. It should be displayed at the top of the Midterm Grade web page.

On the Midterm Grade Web page, click on the browse button near the top of the page and find the file on your PC/Mac that you wish to upload. Click twice on the file and the file name will be brought into the file name box on the screen.

Click on Upload Grades File.
The program will then verify that the grades in your file are valid and match them up to the students using the ids. If there are any errors, a page will be displayed showing the type of error and the student's id. You will be prompted to either continue uploading or to browse for another file.

The next page will display the students' id and name with the grades that you have submitted for upload.

Blanks in the grade column indicate that there was no grade uploaded for this student. If all the grades are blank, then you are probably trying to upload a file for a different CRN.

You should review the page and then click on Submit Grades to save the grades to the database (the grades will be in Banner as soon as you save them). Please make sure that the number of students listed on the web page matches the number of students in your uploaded file. Student ids that are in your file but are not in the database will not be graded.

Please notify the University Registrar's Office if you have a student who does not show up in the web summary class roster or web midterm grade worksheet.

Updates to the uploaded grades can be done on the web page or another upload can be performed which will overwrite the previously uploaded grades until the grade submission deadline for that term.

**NOTE: If you are using Excel, be aware that if your id column is of the default type it will be a number which will truncate leading zeros. You may need to create a mask of 000000000 for this column so that leading zeros on an id number will not be truncated. The upload will not be able to match the student ids if the Banner system has the student id as having a zero in the first position and your file does not. If you are using Excel on a Mac, you will need to save the file as CSV(WINDOWS) type.