1.4. Impacts

The Grader program will have many impacts. One positive impact for the Grader will be the convenience of grade management for teachers and administrators. The teachers will be able to easily assign grades to students or assign a teacher-assistant to do the grades for them. With high security the teacher can manage his/her class from the comfort of his/her home. This will reduce paper usage in collecting grades by hand. This will also increase productivity with the ability to instantly make changes to the grades and to check how well the class, as a whole, is doing.

Another impact of the program will be easy access for students to view their grades and the ability to predict what they will get in the class. This will give teachers more available time to devote to office hours and class since the students will not need to ask "What grade am I getting in this class?"


There are many negative impacts that may result with the use of the new program. One is that grades will be stored electronically through the teacher's computers. This can create a security risk if the program is hacked. Also there is a risk of students being able to hack in to poorly-protected server data. In addition a student could hack the files being sent to his/her client and view all the students’ names/IDs. The electronic turn-in dates can also be altered allowing students to turn in assignments late without the proper penalization. Furthermore a negative impact would be in the case of a power failure or the crashing of computer systems students will no longer be able to access the grades. Finally if a student used a packet-sniffer he/she can intercept the grades as they are being transferred among local and server machines.

 




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