After this semester, running out of ink to record grades in bubble charts will no longer be a problem for Penn professors.
For the first time at Penn, professors were able to submit final grades online.
College faculty were made aware of the switch over the course of the spring semester through e-mails from their respective departments and the College of Arts and Sciences.
College Dean Dennis DeTurck said the new system is quite easy to use and efficient: "All you need are Student ID numbers and grades," he said.
"It's great because [professors] have the grades organized in one place - why transfer them manually?" DeTurck added.
History professor Phoebe Kropp. who has been filling out grades on bubble sheets since she came to Penn in 2001, said that, while "the determination of the grade that preceded filling out the form didn't change, . [the process] was different on a number of levels."
"It was much simpler and quicker. . I didn't have to go into campus yesterday to turn in grade sheets; I actually did it from a coffee shop" she said.
Kropp wasn't the only one to turn in grades from a location off Penn's campus.
DeTurck mentioned that he spoke to a professor who had a conference in New Zealand and actually submitted his grades from across the globe after his flight had landed.
Still, some professors feel the new online process isn't all that different from the old system.
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations professor Joseph Lowry, who had not submitted grades at the time, said, "I don't know why it would be any different than paper grades because those eventually get entered into the computer."
Still, Lowry admitted to hearing positive feedback about the system.
"Some of my colleagues have reported it's easy to use," he said.
The ease of the new system is expected to benefit not only professors but also students.
"Less than 12 hours after I submitted grades, I received an e-mail from a student complaining about a grade," Kropp added.
Using the old method, grades would have to be transferred from the scantron sheets into computers, a process that would not even start until after the final due date for grades.
With this new system, students can see grades on Penn InTouch within about 15 minutes of them being posted. As of Monday, 80 percent of grades had been submitted by professors and were available to students.
"I'm glad we could start [with the new system] as soon as we did," DeTurck said. "People I've talked to have found it really easy."
