Grading

You'll find below: 

  • An overview of our pass/fail grading system
  • Explanations of our two grading requirements:
    • How to submit grades to the university system
    • How to give students narrative feedback
  • Explanation of grading options:
    • Honors in class (M.S. option only)
    • Low pass (M.S. and M.A. option)
  • Samples of narrative evaluations
  • Links to university grading system and narrative-feedback form (right)

Grading Requirements & Options

Please submit grades to the university asap after the end of the semester. If you don't, the university won't let students register for the next semester or, in the case of the spring, to graduate. Here's how to file them:

Step 1: Go to Student Services Online, linked here and via the button to the right.

Step 2: Log in using your UNI and Columbia University password

Step 3: Click “Web Grading” and indicate a grade in the drop-down menu next to each student’s name.  In the case of Jschool students, you’ll see the following options:

  • P (Pass)
  • F (Fail)
  • I (Incomplete)
  • R (ignore this one - it’s for an option the university allows, but we don’t)
  • UW (Unofficial Withdrawal)

In the case of non-Jschool students, you may see actual grade options listed, depending on that school’s grading policy.

Step 4: Set the dropdown menu to the correct grade for each student and click “submit” at the bottom of the page. (Be sure to click “submit” and not “save”; the latter saves the grades in the system but won’t submit them to the university.)

Because “pass” encompasses such a wide range of ability, the Jschool asks you to give students more detailed feedback on their performance in your class by submitting narrative evaluations at the end of the semester. The only exception to this are for instructors teaching 1-credit classes (i.e., M.S. History, Ethics, Law and Business of Journalism and M.A. Photo and Audio classes.) For all others, instructors need to write an evaluation of at least a couple of paragraphs, giving students a sense of their strengths as well as the areas in which they need improvement. 

Because it’s hard to recall all the work that an individual student does across the span of the semester, you may find it helpful to keep notes, which make it a lot easier to write the evaluations at semester’s end. The narrative evaluations are submitted to the Student Affairs Office  via the button to the right. Associate Dean of Students Melanie Huff will also send out this link in an email at the end of each semester. 

You can write your evaluations in Word and upload them to the form or cut and paste them directly into the form. 

Examples of evaluations are linked here. 

NOTE: Honors-in-class is a designation for M.S. students only; the M.A. faculty voted against awarding honors to students in their program. However, you can award a low pass to an M.A. student as long as you’ve specified in your syllabus that you will exercise that option if a student’s performance warrants it.

The narrative-evaluation form for M.S. students includes a dropdown box asking whether you’re awarding the student honors in class. This is an unofficial designation that won’t appear on a student’s university transcript; however, it does provide you with a means of recognizing students who excel in your class. Accumulated honors count toward school-wide awards at graduation. .

The number of honors a you can award for your M.S. class depends on the number of students in your section. The formula is as follows:

    • 1-8 students enrolled = 1 (optional) honors-in-class designation
    • 9-16 students enrolled = up to 2 (optional) honors-in-class designations
    • 17-24 students enrolled = up to 3 (optional honors-in-class designations
    • For more than 24 students (example: the lecture-style Essentials classes), you may designate one honors-in-class per each eight students.

IMPORTANT: If you submit more honors designations than your enrollment allows, we won’t record any of them for year-end awards consideration. If you have questions about how many honors-in-class designations you can award, contact Melanie Huff.

Students in both the M.S. and M.A. programs can be given low pass, as long as you've indicated in the syllabus you distributed at the beginning of the class that you've reserved this option.

Like the (M.S.-only) honors designation, a low pass is a means of giving students additional feedback on their performance -- in this case, letting students know that, although they passed, it was by the skin of their teeth.

Low passes are submitted via the narrative-evaluation form for both M.S. and M.A. students.

You can award as many low passes are there are students who warrant it -- but we hope there won’t be many of them!

Brief explanation of J-school's pass/fail grading system.

Before failing a student, you need to give him/her an opportunity to improve her performance. (Information on warning system, and/or link to student disciplinary-procedures page)/.