The purpose of the new grades transfer system is to enable grades to be sent directly from NILE to SITS, meaning that grades do not have to be downloaded, emailed to the Student Records Team, and manually entered into SITS. The key advantages of the new NILE > SITS grades transfer system are that:
1. It eliminates the possibly of error that exists when manually transferring grades from one system to another, thus removing the necessity for academic staff to double check that the grades they awarded were correctly transferred to SITS.
2. It eliminates the possibility of a data breach where a non-password protected spreadsheet containing student grades is accidentally emailed to the wrong person.
3. It will save the Student Records Team a considerable amount of time, potentially several thousand hours per year, thus freeing up vital professional services staff to be able to spend more time dealing with student and staff enquiries and other essential and important work, instead of manually transferring data from one system to another.
While the actual process of sending grades from NILE to SITS has changed, from an academic staff perspective fundamentally there is no real difference between emailing a spreadsheet containing student grades to the Student Records Team and using the new NILE > SITS grades transfer process. In both cases, before the grades are sent all grading and feedback has to be complete, all grades have to be awarded to all students who should have grades, all internal verification processes must be complete, all caps to grades have to be applied for late submissions and all deferrals due to academic misconduct have to be recorded. Any differences to the old and new processes (e.g., capping marks due to late submissions at the resit submission points, marking in percentages, centralising of the assignment extensions process) is due to concurrent changes in University policy and not because of the introduction of the NILE > SITS grades transfer process.
The process is the same for both the old and the new processes. If a grade or grades are found to be wrong after they have been sent to SITS you can update the grade(s) in NILE at any point, but you will need to contact the Student Records Team to update the grade(s) in SITS.
Where the wrong column is transferred and the wrong grades are sent to SITS you will need to update the grades in NILE and then contact the Student Records Team and ask them to update the corresponding grades in SITS. Where an entire set of grades is wrong, downloading the gradebook report with the correct grades and sending this to the Student Records Team will be the best option.
For first sit assignments all students must have grades awarded. If this is not the case then you should consider that the grading process and internal moderation processes are not complete and grades should not be sent from NILE to SITS. Please only send grades where the whole cohort has been marked.
SITS will only recognise resit grades for students who have a resit opportunity, therefore if the 0 was awarded to a student who did not have a resit opportunity for that particular piece of work then SITS will not process the grade. If a grade of 0 was wrongly sent for a student, then that grade can be updated in NILE, but the Student Records Team will need to be contacted in order to get the grade updated in SITS.
For assessments that are out of 100 it makes almost no difference whether they are set to display points or percentages - the only difference will be the appearance or not of the % sign after the grade in the NILE gradebook.
If an assessment is not out of 100 then the display should be set to percentage so that it accurately reflects the grade students are awarded in SITS. E.g., if a student scores 75 out of 150 in a test and the display is set to points then NILE will display 75, but the grade awarded in SITS will be 50%.
In all cases, regardless of what display options are selected in the assessment submission points that staff set up in NILE, the grades transfer columns are automatically set to display percentages rather than points, and even if this setting is changed the 'Send Grades to SITS' tool will still send the percentage grade anyway as the grade it sends from NILE to SITS is always calculated as points awarded divided by total possible points multiplied by 100 (e.g., 75 ÷ 150 x 100). This means that even if staff use the old UnderGrad and PostGrad Letter schemas and display letter grades to students in NILE, these will be disregarded during the grades transfer process and the underlying numeric values will be used to calculate the appropriate percentages which will be sent to SITS.
Ultimately, regardless of how staff set up their assignment submission points and what display options are selected, it is not possible to send anything other than percentage grades from NILE to SITS. However, it is possible that where display options are not correctly selected in NILE that the grades students see in NILE will not be the same grades they are awarded in SITS.
No, there is no automated checking process that checks grades awarded in NILE against grades entered in SITS. If a grade is changed in NILE after it has been sent to SITS and it is not updated manually in SITS by the Student Records Team upon request from a member of academic staff, then the grade in SITS will remain as it was when it was originally sent from NILE.
Currently, staff will need to contact their Student Records Team to find out details of students who have been granted extensions for an assignment. However, it is planned that all staff teaching on a module will eventually be able to see information about extensions and deferrals for that module on SITS.
The timescale for submitting grades has not changed, and grades should still be submitted to SITS four weeks after the assessment due date, including grades for work submitted late and work with an extension.
Information about extensions will be available from the Student Records Team no later than one week after the assessment due date. This is because students can request an extension right up to 23:59 on the due date (thus potentially after the due date if the due date is not also 23:59), and it may take a few days for all extension requests to be manually checked and approved, especially at busy times of the year.
Information about deferrals due to mitigating circumstances will also be available in the SRS Staff Portal.
Yes, you can get support from your learning technologist if you need help getting used to the new grades transfer process. Your learning technologist will not be able to complete the process for you, but they will be happy to show you how it works.
If your NILE course does not contain any grades transfer columns in the gradebook, you will need to log a ticket with IT Services at www.northampton.ac.uk/help, selecting 'Log an Issue'. Please log your request with the subject/summary line of 'FAO Academic Systems Team: Missing Grades Transfer Columns', and in the description provide the exact NILE course ID (e.g., PHI1001-SUN-2425-S1) in which the grades transfer columns are missing.
Unfortunately, the only way to prevent staff from being able to delete a grade transfer column also prevents them from being able to delete all other types of content in their NILE courses. While most partner staff cannot delete content in their NILE courses and thus cannot delete grade transfer columns either, we did not want to remove the option for UON staff to delete NILE content.
If a grades transfer column is deleted you will need to contact IT Services in order to have it added back to your NILE course. To do this, please log a ticket with IT Services at www.northampton.ac.uk/help, selecting 'Log a Request', and choosing 'Log an Issue'. Please log your request for the attention of the Academic Systems Team, and provide the exact NILE course ID (e.g., PHI1001-SUN-2425-S1), assessment code (e.g., ES1), and whether it was the first sit or resit assessment point which was deleted.
No, it will not be necessary for academic staff to check all the grades in SITS in detail against those that were sent from NILE. A key benefit of the new NILE > SITS grades transfer process is the elimination of the possibility of error which can be made when manually transferring data from one system to another, therefore visually cross checking between grades in NILE and SITS will no longer be necessary.
Grades in NILE will be displayed up to two decimal places. For assessments marked out of 100 it will be very unusual to have non-whole number grades, especially since Turnitin only allows whole-number grades to be entered, but non-whole number grades may be more common in assessments which are not marked out of 100, and with assessments marked with rubrics. When non-whole number grades are sent from NILE to SITS, SITS will use standard rounding rules to convert these to whole number percentages.
No. If you have merged NILE courses then you will need to continue using the old system of downloading the gradebook report and sending this to the Student Records Team. If you use the new grades transfer process with merged NILE courses, only the grades for students enrolled on the parent course will be recognised by SITS.
There is no University policy which specifies who should send the grades from NILE to SITS, however, in most cases it is likely to be the module leader who will undertake this task. Ultimately, the most important thing is that the teaching/marking team agree who will send the grades and that the person sending the grades is a member of academic staff who is in a position to determine that the grading is correct and that the internal moderation processes are complete. Professional services staff are not permitted to send grades from NILE to SITS.
No. Only UON staff enrolled on a NILE course with the role Instructor will have access to the Send Grades to SITS tool. Partner staff who access the Send Grades to SITS tool will receive an Access Denied message, regardless of which role they have on a NILE course.
Yes, the username of the person who sent grades from NILE to SITS can be viewed by all staff enrolled on the module as 'Instructor' or 'Partner Instructor'. To view whether grades were sent and, if so, by whom, you can follow the process outlined in the previous section of the grades transfer guide entitled, 'Sending your mapped grades from NILE to SITS'.
Once grades have been sent from NILE to SITS, all staff enrolled on the NILE course as an Instructor will receive an email confirmation. When the grades have been processed in SITS, you will be able to view them in the SRS Staff Portal. For more information about this, please contact your Student Records Team.
No, there are no exemptions to using the grades transfer process based on assessment type. Grades for all assessments should be entered in NILE and sent to SITS using the Send Grades to SITS tool. Where students do not submit work electronically staff are able to set up an offline submission or create a gradebook item to record their grades and feedback. For non-digital submissions, staff are reminded of the Office for Students' regulation that 'an appropriate record for retention' be kept. See NILE Design Standards: Availability of student assessments, grades and feedback in NILE for more information.
Each of the SITS grades transfer columns in the NILE gradebook contains the assessment code (e.g., ES1) and the assessment title (e.g., Essay, 2,000 words), both of which are generated from the official assessment record in SITS.
If you believe that the information displayed about your assessments in the grades transfer columns in NILE is incorrect, the first thing to do is to check the module specification to see whether the assessment information in the grades transfer columns matches the information about your assessments in the module specification. If the assessment information in the grades transfer columns and the assessment information in the module specification agree, then this indicates that the information about your module assessments in SITS as displayed in the grades transfer columns in NILE is correct. However, if the assessment information in the module specification is different from the assessment information displayed in the grades transfer columns, then this indicates that the module assessment information in SITS is incorrect. In general, the assessment information recorded in module specification should be regarded as definitive, and where there is a discrepancy the assessments in NILE and/or information about the assessments in SITS should be updated to match what is recorded in the module specification.
Once you have checked your module specification, if you believe that your module assessment information has been wrongly recorded in SITS, please contact curriculum@northampton.ac.uk
If the assessment information in the grades transfer columns and the assessment information in the module specification agree, but are different from the assessments that you have set up in NILE, where the differences are very minor (e.g., you have called your assessment AS1, but the module specification and grades transfer column lists ES1, or if the assessment titles are slightly different but not substantively so, i.e., the learning outcomes being assessed have not changed, the type of assessment has not changed, and the weighting of the assessment remains the same) then this information can be updated in NILE for these submission points. However, if the assessments set up in NILE are substantively or materially different from the assessments listed in the module specification and in SITS (e.g., students have been set a presentation but the module specification lists an essay, or the assessment title records a 5,000 word assessment but students have been asked to submit a 2,500 word assessment), please contact curriculum@northampton.ac.uk for advice.
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