The Gradebook is appropriately used in an educational environment to assess student performances and analyze the results. There are three operational settings for the Grader: (1) the Cal Poly Computer Science department (2) the Cal Poly students, and (3) other university campuses.

1. The Cal Poly Computer Science department uses client computers, either personal or department, to locally manage gradebooks. The Cal Poly Student Information Services (SIS) allow faculty to fetch their course rosters from a department server, and post end-of-term grades through their own computers. Instructors are able to view, add, and edit their student’s grades through whichever software they prefer. A popular tool the Cal Poly CS department makes use of is handin, an electronic assignment submission tool which allows professors to consolidate student work into an instructor’s directory. The use of handin creates further options for the collected assignments. Another gradebook tool the department can use is PolyLearn. PolyLearn is a homegrown example of such software that is an available option to all Cal Poly instructors to store their gradebooks. It is a web application that can be accessed on any computer with a simple login and password verification. Although PolyLearn is available to all Cal Poly faculty, not all instructors use it.

2. Cal Poly students also use personal or department computers to check their grades. They use their own computers to use handin, or to ssh into Cal Poly’s unix servers where they can work on their assignments remotely. Students can also access their grades through the web, such as Cal Poly’s PolyLearn. If an instructor decides to use PolyLearn, students have access to the course’s PolyLearn through their online portal. The two-way connection to PolyLearn allows instructors to communicate with their students by making information easily accessible, such as: assignments, relevant items, forums, and grades. It can also be used as a means for assignment submission, and for students to perform grade prediction on their performances.

3. Other university campuses similarly utilize personal computers to use computer software to manage gradebooks.

Before the use of this system, there exists capable gradebook software that stores the grades of students, although they are not flexible in customization nor student viewing. After this system is installed, we aim to improve user experience by substantially increasing the amount users can customize the organization of grades and curves. On the student side, we aim to offer features that are supportive of gaging the student’s grade such as viewing class standing and calculating predicted grades with projected scores. The operations in this Grader tool has been designed to fit Gene Fisher’s criteria.

The Grader tool is intended to be a general web application software which does not require any installation, and therefore no additional computer-based support. It is easily accessible by both teacher and student. The Grader tool is expected to entirely replace the usage of previous gradebook software. Therefore, it needs to be integrated with Cal Poly’s database of student, faculty, and enrollment system in order to efficiently display data to both clients.