FAQ Grade Entry

1. Log in to campusnet. If you have trouble with this, such as a forgotten password, you can get in touch with campus.net@jacobs-university.de (despite the ominous sounding ticket system, the administrator generally replies quickly).
2. Select the module that you wish to grade. Please note that students are generally graded on a module basis. Accordingly, you can find the grade entry under “my modules” instead of “my courses”. Some exceptional classes, for example for exchange students or foundation year students, may be graded on a course basis instead
3. Once you have the module information in front of you, click on “grade input” in the top right corner. Here you may be able to choose between different partial grades (exam, lab report etc.) and the different rounds i.e. attempts.
4. Click on the correct one and enter the grade for each student. Alternatively, you can import from an excel file, see below.
5. Under “final grade” you can see the grade campusnet automatically generates based on the entered grades and their weightings.
6. In the top right corner, you can see the options “close”, “save” and “release”. Click on “close” to simply leave the grade input window (your entered grades are lost). Click on “save” to save the grades you have entered. Use this option if you are only making notes, or are not yet finished with the grade input.
7. Once you have finished entering the grades for one particular list, click on “release”. This means you can no longer make changes to the grades (see FAQ below for trouble-shooting), so do this if they are final from your side.
8. Print the grade sheet either on paper on into a pdf file. Mark the excused students (see below), missed module achievements, failed audits (see below) etc. and feel free to leave an explanatory note if there is some kind of special case. If you send us a digital file, you can of course add this information in the e-mail message instead.
9. Submit this list to Registrar Services. If you want to submit a hardcopy, we have a mailbox in the lobby of Reimar Lüst Hall or you can use the Hauspost instead. You are, of course, also welcome to drop by our office in RLH 117! But we can also accept this simply via e-mail.

First, follow the steps 1 -3 above and choose the correct partial grade and grading round. Then click on “Export” and right click (!) on “Download list”. Go to “save as…” and select the place where to save the list. Save.

Open the file you have saved. Fill in the grades under “Noten” in column F. Make sure to use percentages (or in exceptional cases another applicable grading system) and make sure to format the cells correctly, so that excel doesn’t change numbers into dates or similar. Save as a *.txt file

Then go back to the grade input in campusnet. Go on “Import” and select the correct file via “Browse”. Click on “Import”. Cross-check the imported grades and check “accept” for each grade that you wish to import the way it is shown. Finally, click on “Apply”.

Constructor University uses percentage grades for almost all classes. These are percentages from 0% - 100%, with a 45% being the lowest passing grade. All grading components in a class need to be graded on this scale.

Very few classes use different grading schemes – either a pass/fail scheme in which “pass” and “fail” are the only grades you are able to enter, or a numerical grading system with grades from 5.00 (failing grade) to 1.00 (highest possible grade). You can find the overview here: https://www.jacobs-university.de/academic-policies but please note that anything other than percentage grades will almost definitely not be relevant to the class you teach.

Generally, the final module grade is calculated by campusnet based on the weightings of the grading components. Please enter your grades in the grading list of the grading component (e.g. “written exam”) and not in the general grading list for the module! You should be able to adjust the final grade if you wish to give a bonus, for example. If this does not work, you can also make a note with your printout and we can change the student’s final grade.
If you believe the grading components in campusnet are incorrect, please contact Educational Resource Planning. However, the components that are laid out in the module handbook are binding so you can’t change them at will.

Grades in Campusnet are not official until they have been “published”. This is done by Registrar Services once we receive your confirmation. If you skip the step of the printout/file, the students do not officially have a grade for your class (and they can’t see one, either). This means they do not have the credits for this module, it doesn’t factor into their GPA, and we cannot let them graduate as long as even one of their grades is not published.

Please indicate them to us when you submit your grades. We will set them to incomplete and register them for the second round of the exam (make-up). If you only tick the “absent” box but don’t let us know they were excused, their grade remains at 0% and they lose of their attempts. Once a student is registered in the second round, you are able to enter grades for him/her again. See below.

If a student has a valid official excuse, the university is obliged to offer them a make-up opportunity. This right cannot be denied. In case of medical excuses, it is even a legal obligation. If a student does not have a valid official excuse, the decision of whether or not to excuse them is up to you as the instructor. They may have a legitimate reason for missing an exam that does not qualify for an official excuse. In these cases, it is your decision how strict or lenient you would like to be. As long as you indicate them as “excused” to us we consider them excused

Unfortunately, not quite. Official excuses are only valid if a student has also informed you of their absence in advance, and clearly we cannot see that. You also have the right to excuse students from an attempt without an official excuse, and we cannot see that either. And for excuses in the middle of the semester, we don’t even know what work they were supposed to do in your class that day (Hold a presentation? A midterm? A deadline for a homework essay?) and thus which grading component they should be excused for. This is why you will need to tell us.

We can check on an individual basis whether our colleagues have sent out an official excuse for a certain student about a certain date to a certain instructor. If you indicate nothing at all for anyone, we will assume that all issued official excuses were validated. But generally, keeping track of this is the task of the instructor. We’re always happy to help in case of doubt or technical issues, of course!

No, that is not correct.

It is true that students in the new system are registered automatically for the next attempt if they don’t appear for the exam. However, if they have an unexcused absence in their first attempt, this counts as one failed attempt (out of three attempts in total). If they have an excused absence, the attempt is not counted – they can attend the make-up and that is their actual first attempt. Since we need to keep a close eye on the number of attempts a student had at each exam, you will still have to mark excused students when you submit your grade lists to us.

This is essentially the same thing as official excuses, just for a different grading component. Mark him as excused/incomplete/pending/late submission on your list, anything that makes the situation clear. We will register the student into the second round. This allows you to enter his/her grade later but all the others can already receive their grades. Of course this also works if there are several students affected

Please let us know their grade (add it on the printout, write an e-mail, etc.) and we will investigate the case. If the grade can be considered, we will take care of the grade entry for you.

Students always receive their grade in the course/module where they were registered originally. So if a student was registered in Fall 2018, this is where the grade goes even if he sits the exam in the Fall 2019 semester.

Please identify the correct course or module (correct semester), click on grade entry and choose the correct partial grade (e.g. final exam). You should now see several “rounds” of grades. When a student is excused or has failed in the first round, he is added to the second round. You can enter your grades in this list. The most recent list should always contain all students of that semester who are eligible for the make-up or re-take. You can print/pdf-ize this list as usual and submit it to us.

Students are always obliged to sit any examination the next time it is offered. So if there are any students who were supposed to show up for this make-up exam and failed to appear, please indicate them as excused or not excused, as usual.

Generally, nothing. It is handled on our side.

In case you are interested (or receive student questions), a short explanation follows. What happens to these students depends on whether they study according to the old or new study structure.

In the new structure (graduating class of 2022 and up), most modules consist of only one exam. If they fail this exam, they can retake it up to two more times (i.e. three attempts in total). They will be registered for the next attempt, generally the make-up exam in the following make-up exam period, automatically when you submit a failing grade for them. In modules with more than one assessment, students either have to pass both assessment (and consequently have to retake one if they fail it) or have to pass with an average grade of the two assessments (in which case a fail in your exam may be balanced out by a good passing grade in the other one, so that they do not need to retake anything). If you are not sure which one applies to your particular module, you can check the module data sheet in the handbook on the Constructor website. If a student fails or misses more than once, their next attempt is in the following year when the class is taught again. They will be registered there with an audit status in order to have access to the class, but of course they are still graded in their “original” module.

In the old structure (graduating class of 2021 and earlier), students can only retake an exam or course they have already taken if the module as a whole is failed. In those cases they receive a module retake decision by the module owner which specifies which of the module components they have to retake in which fashion. You do not need to keep track of these if you are not the module owner. Students who retake your course or exam should simply appear on your participant lists once they are retaking it.

A student who has failed three attempts may not attempt the examination again.

The time frames for grading are very tight and we are aware of this. Please note that the submission deadlines are set by the university leadership years in advance (visible in the Academic Calendar on the website) and you can use this to plan your semester accordingly.

If there are good reasons for a delay, for example illness, you can of course get in touch and we’ll negotiate a reasonable new deadline.

Please note that these grading deadlines all serve a purpose and should be handled strictly. For example, the grades for the Fall semester are due in mid-January because the make-up period starts in late January and students need to know before that whether they have failed an exam and need to take its make-up. Similarly, the grades for the make-up period are due in mid-February because course registration for the Spring semester ends in mid-February/late February and students need to have the grades for pre-requisite courses from the Fall in order to register in the Spring.

Even a delay of one day in your grade submission may mean that a student cannot prepare adequately for a make-up exam, cannot register for a following course, or cannot receive his or her diploma during the graduation ceremony.
Please cooperate with us on this.

This happens all the time, no worries. There are several options.

If only 1-2 students have an incorrect grade, just mark them with your grade list somehow (for example cross out the grade and write the new one next to it) and we’ll change it when we process the list. This saves you some work.

If more students are affected, for example because the grades were incorrectly imported and all lab report grades are now wrong, you can ask us to “un-release” the grades. That re-opens the grade entry for you and you can make changes again.

Once a grade is already published, which it probably will be if you’ve already handed in your printout, only we can make changes. The easiest way to do this is to submit a grade adjustment form to us (you can find this on our website), on which you simply enter which grade needs to be changed and then sign at the bottom. If too many students are affected and you don’t want to have to fill out a form for every single one, you can instead hand in a new grade sheet for the whole class with the corrections on it. In that case, please mark them as corrections somehow so that we’ll notice the changes.

You are probably checking under "my courses" instead of "my modules".

If you are checking the correct place but this error message still appears, it may be a mistake in the way the module/course is modeled in campusnet. Please contact Educational Resource Planning to find the error and fix it.

Generally, a student is automatically added into the exam list/grading list when he registers for the course or module. In some cases, this does not happen due to an incorrect registration or a change in the student’s study status, and in some cases it is unfortunately not technically possible to fix. If you have grades for students who don’t appear in the list, please send them to Registrar Services for investigation. If the student was eligible to take this examination, we will make sure the grade is considered.

Please indicate them to us. We will make sure they are taken out of future exam lists and need to retake the module from scratch.

No. Passed examinations can't be retaken.

Actually, there are at least a handful of graduating students in almost every class. Many third-years do still have to take (or re-take) classes from their first or second year. Please note that Foundation Year students who predominantly take first-year classes are also graduating students. So please make sure beforehand that there are really no graduating students in your class before you skip this grading deadline.

Check the participant list for your course in campusnet and click on “Extended List”.

There you can see the students’ class, i.e. what major they study and which cohort they are in. It looks something like this: ug19IEM. The first two letters stand for undergraduate (ug), master (m) or Foundation Year (fy), the last three letters stand for the student’s study program. You only need to pay attention to the number in the middle which is the year they are supposed to graduate.

In other words, if the year is 2020, then all students with a 20 in their class (e.g. ug20IBA, m20SCM) are supposed to graduate this year. Please note there may also be some ug19 or even ug18 students who had to extend their studies and graduate (late) in 2020.

No, only those three. The grades for the rest of the students can wait until the later submission deadline in June.

Please enter the grades for the graduating students in campusnet, do not release the grades, but submit your list to us as usual. We will publish the grades you have entered individually. The grade entry for the rest of the students is then still open and you can enter those until the later deadline in June.

If you release the grades, it closes the grade entry for all students in the group regardless of whether they already have a grade entered there or not. This means you can no longer make changes, including entering grades for non-graduating students. If this happens by accident, though, let us know and we can “un-release” the grades for the group.

Yes, if the student has submitted their thesis by the mid-May deadline.

In Moodle.

When you log in to Moodle, you will find one or several classes named Thesis + study program (e.g. “Thesis IRPH”) where the students from this program are listed. Students upload their thesis into Moodle where you can download it for grading.
Moodle will also provide you with a similarity percentage (“plagiarism check”) via a Turnitin plugin.

You can find more detailed instructions for grading on Moodle itself. If any Moodle-specific questions remain, kindly address registrar@jacobs-university.de or refer to the information e-mails sent out by Registrar Services.

Yes, this can be done exceptionally as a preliminary measure if you are pressed for time.

If a student has submitted their thesis by the mid-May deadline, they have a right to receive a grade by the grade submission deadline of that semester. If you do not have the time to make a detailed assessment by that deadline, you can let us know that the student has got a temporary pass instead of a grade. Please only do so if the thesis has actually been submitted and you have given it a brief check to see that it is a definite pass! This enables us to already issue a diploma for the student at graduation day, provided they have passed all other requirements.

Please note that you cannot leave the grade a “pass”; you will have to provide us with an actual grade afterwards.

No. This only means they will not receive their diploma at graduation day, but later. They have until the end of the semester to submit their thesis, which is August 31st.

No problem. They can still use Moodle to upload after the first deadline and all the above grading instructions still apply. However, if they submit their thesis later, they will probably not receive a diploma on graduation day. They will instead receive it later over the summer, once all their grades are in.

You do not have to inform us when you give such an extension, but we do appreciate a brief message on it all the same. It accelerates the degree audit for us (because a student expected to submit their thesis in July can definitely not receive a diploma in June, which means their other grades don’t have to be checked in great detail at that time).