Dear Faculty,

I am writing to bring to your attention a new tool that CUNY has activated. When grading rosters on CUNYfirst open Friday, you will see a new button giving you the ability to import grades from Brightspace. It is my understanding that CUNY is developing guidance that will be shared with faculty, but this has not been finalized, yet.

I ask that you please NOT import grades from Brightspace this semester.

I can see the use of this tool and I expect that many of us, even in in-person courses, will be using it in the future. I also have questions about how the tool works and I am uncomfortable with our community using it until we have a better understanding of it. The tool is being announced very late in the semester. There are different grading options that exist in Brightspace and I am not sure how these options affect what gets imported. Nor am I aware of any testing of this tool in the context of actual courses and grades.

I share these cautions because it will be difficult to fix mistakes if there are errors when grades are submitted. Once grades are posted, if there are errors, grade changes must be requested individually by faculty using the proper application through CUNYfirst. While students graduate at the end of each term, the largest number graduate after the spring semester. Once those students have graduated, if there are errors in grades, it is no longer just a matter of filling out the form. Those students’ academic records are closed.

Once we have seen how this tool works and understand what we should do in advance in our Brightspace gradebooks to make this tool work well, there is potential for this to help us run our courses a little more efficiently. Until then, please enter grades as you normally do.

I hope you are all having a wonderful end to the academic year and please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,

Andrew

Andrew H. Sidman
Interim Dean of Academic Programs

Professor of Political Science
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
212-237-8179

“I am a responsible employee”

Visit our Brightspace Transition Website

Visit the Transition Announcements Repository