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- Students in a classroom raising their hands if they knew their grades.
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- A student’s room during Dead Week, prior to Finals.
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- Senior John Endresen and Jereme Kemp texting their buddies and celebrating at Disney Land after Finals are over.
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- Junior Gabe Vaught with Senior Nic LaPonte and Tony Manduca asking each other about their grades before going home for Fall Break
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- Senior Gabe Vaught prepares to go to Class
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- Senior Sarah Wetter upset she does not know what her grades are.
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- Senior Jereme Kemp stresses about finals, having not slept in 2 days.
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- Senior Gabe Vaught after being asked his grades midway through the semester.
A Check a Day Keeps the Stress Away
The University of Portland’s emphasis on grades does not correlate on student’s access to knowing the grades. By Jared Stefani (www.stefanij.wordpress.com)
It is half way through the semester: the stress of midterms is over, the classes seem to be moving along and coeds are unanimously at the point of roughing through to the home stretch of winter break. Students feel confident about their standings in classes because they have turned in all their major assignments and attending almost all of the classes. When the final for the class comes, students take it and wait until they find their grade. When they get their grade back it is a lot lower than they expected. They wonder how this could have happened and why the professor did not let the students know their standings in the class. This long anecdote is not fiction; it is a reoccurring part of the academic cycle at the University of Portland. The University of Portland pays a large amount of money for professors to report class assignments and grades, but most professors do not use the “Pilots Portal.”
“Pilots Portal” is a network that uses an open-source program called Moodle to help all members of the University’s community stay connected with important notes, updates, documents, and other necessary resources. The official Moodle website describes the program as “a Course Management System.” It is a web application that educators can use to create effective online learning sites.” The University of Portland uses this application for all of its faculty and students and calls it PilotsUP. The University’s website states that, “PilotsUP improves the way the University community interacts online.” There are different facets of PilotsUP: Web Mail, My Announcements, Learning@UP, Campus Events, and Self-Serve. Each separate program offers the user control their university life. However, a majority of UP professors do not use the Learning@UP function of PilotsUP to the fullest capability in order to help their students. The university’s website states Learning@UP is an “online learning management system that helps you prepare for and follow-up on your classroom experiences online. The University offers students and university faculty an online environment where they can share assignments, communicate, discuss, and enhance the learning experience.” Yet many students at the University find that their professors fail to post important pieces of information to the Portal, thereby failing to use a universal tool for education that would help students anywhere, as long as they have Internet access. This tends to be a large problem when students face unexpected circumstances, such as traveling across the nation for a family emergency.
The school incorporates this into their online program, but most professor, do not use the “Grades” application of the program to tell students their current status. When asking student Gabriel Vaught about the uses of PilotsUP: Learning@UP he said, “The University has a program which they pay for but do not use. It seems to be a waste of money.” The school does pay for the program, but University of Portland Provost, Brother Stabrowski said, “I don’t know how much they pay for it but they do pay for it.” It seems that the University of Portland pays for the program but the Provost does not even know the price. The program does get used a lot through the School of Nursing. Senior nursing student John Endresen said the School of Nursing uses the program to tell the student’s grades directly after we take a test.” John then went onto his PilotsUP: Learning@UP and showed all of his classes and the corresponding grades that he had earned, noting at the bottom of the page his overall grade. “It helps keep track of my status so I do not have to be in wonder and worry about it,” laughingly said John.
Interviewing University of Portland Provost, Br. Stabrowski, helped explain the reason for having the program but not having a policy enforcing professors to return grade reports any time prior to completion of the course. Br. Stabrowski said, “The school does not have any sort of policy about reporting grades to students, it is based on the professors discretion.” The Provost was asking why there was no policy to return grades to students and said, “Teaching is an art, some people do it differently.” After discusses about the art of teaching, the Provost described why he could not enforce a rule about returning grades prior to completion of the course by laughingly saying, “Leading professors is like herding goats, all of them are intelligent successful people, and just because I say something does not mean they have to follow it.” The Provost did say there was a new policy, trying to be incorporated into the academic plan, in which “all 100 and 200 classes have to report midterm grades to help freshman get acquainted to College. We test early and give feedback early.”
If professors will not use the PilotsUP: Learning@UP grade return then a student will just have to go to the office hours and have professor calculate the grades, if the professor will do that. It seems the students at the University of Portland will just continue striving for their best but not having status reports of their grades.
Questions or Concerns contact: Jared Stefani stefani10@up.edu
Word Count: 877
Senior Jereme Kemp stresses about finals, having not slept in 2 days.
- Junior Gabe Vaught with Senior Nic LaPonte and Tony Manduca asking each other about their grades before going home for Fall Break
A student's room during Dead Week, prior to Finals.Senior John Endresen and Jereme Kemp texting their buddies and celebrating at Disney Land after Finals are over.Senior Gabe Vaught prepares to go to ClassSenior Gabe Vaught after being asked his grades midway through the semester.Senior Sarah Wetter upset she does not know what her grades are.Students in a classroom raising their hands if they knew their grades.
