Notes of the FSUCECC Representative to SIS Level I Liaison Committee.
August 16, 2004

The SIS Level I Committee met in Flint (Marriott Conference Room, 203E)
and discussed SPIRE v8.  Add/drop went online at 8:30 AM this morning.
Some gripes about the use of SPIRE to report grades were discussed, most
appeared to be strongly correlated with lack of familiarity with the
available resources.  Chris Roberts reported pleasant experiences in
submitting summer grades, though there are not so many of these.

v8 is a huge application, the portal is new, and the installation was
difficult.  Some issues related to training were discussed...who should
have it, who must have it, what to do about those who should have it and
refuse to get it.  The resolution of this issue was unclear to me.  The
Registrar noted in passing that audits are cleared every weekend.  The
issue of grade submission for large classes was discussed, the Registrar
noting that there are essentially three ways to use WEBCT to get many
grades into SPIRE.  These are:  a.  Manually enter all the grades in
WEBCT.  b.  Copy an EXCEL or other spreadsheet into WEBCT.  c.  Enter
all grade information for the course as it is acquired into WEBCT, and
ask WEBCT to calculate the final grade.  How WEBCT is then used to
download the whole collection into SPIRE was not discussed.  The main
problem seems to be the wide variety of special grading practices that
must be accommodated across campus, all feeding into a single final
format for recording final grades in courses.  In this discussion, it
was noted that an INC converts to an F at the end of the semester
following the award, but a blank counts as an F in calculating GPE
but never converts to an F, simply remaining as a blank forever.  The
Registrar strongly discouraged the use of blanks in reporting final
grades.  NR may sometimes be inappropriate and may be converted by
the Registrar's office to a blank.

The next meeting of the SIS Level I Committee is scheduled for
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 at 1:00 PM in Lederle A217 (Alvarez's
office in OIT).

Howard D. Stidham