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The GradeMail application is designed to allow instructors to easily keep their students informed of their
latest scores and grades by individual email or with an individual printed report. Any number of courses can be configured
for access within GradeMail allowing the application to provided a single location to manage dissemination of grade information
for courses being taught concurrently.
The grading information is maintained by the instructor in an Excel spreadsheet file for each course
(many instructors probably already do this). With few restrictions, the Excel spreadsheets can make use of whatever formulas,
logic and formatting that the instructor finds necessary to implement their desired grading and scoring policies. A typical
course spreadsheet is shown below:
When the GradeMail application is started, all stored configurations for courses are read and the main
viewing window (shown below) is made visible. The course configurations define what Excel spreadsheet to use for each course
and what information is provided to each student that is sent a grade report via an email message or printed report.
All Excel spreadsheets are accessed by GradeMail in a read-only manner and are never modified by GradeMail.
Each course appears under a separate tab on the main viewing window ( the example has two courses, CS364
and CS402).
The cells in the first row and first column shown for each course (white characters on a black
background) are inserted by GradeMail to provide reference numbers for the rows and columns. All other cells in the table
display are read from the course Excel spreadsheet.
The color highlighting in the main viewing window is used as follows:
- green highlighting shows what headings will be used for columns included in grade reports
- yellow highlighting shows what rows will be used to prepare reports and what columns are
included in grade reports
The menu bar provides access to various operations that allow configuration of the courses
and the email account that will be used to prepare and send grade reports.
After initial configuration, an instructor would typically use GradeMail to prepare an updated
grade report that includes the latest grade or score. For example, the latest homework score could be added to all grade
reports in the following dialog window and then emails are sent to all students or reports printed for confidential delivery.
The instructor's time to accomplish this would be one or two minutes regardless of the class size.
Another typical use of GradeMail would be to notify individual students of changes in a score
or grade due to resubmissions, corrections, etc. Several mouse clicks in the following dialog window would temporarily select
the student to receive a report which can then be sent with another menu selection. The normal selection of students receiving
reports would remain unchanged.
The instructor can choose to use student email addresses to send the grade reports. The email
address used for each student can be either a school-supplied address (more common) or whatever address the student has provided
the instructor.
An example of a grade report received by email is shown below:
Alternately, the instructor can choose to print grade reports for delivery
to each student via some confidential method. For instance, the reports are formatted so they can be easily folded and
stapled so only the recipient's name is visible and then ditributed in the class room. An example of a printed report
is shown below:
More detailed information on the use of GradeMail is provided in the various help topics
provided with the application.
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