Paper Moon

[Juvenal]

I've been looking at the thread on how long one should retain student records.  Well, my school said "two years," and in my half-century career, no one ever asked to see these, and what I was to retain were finals from lecture and lab.  Every two years, a heavy waste basket.

I will admit that my career was at a CC, so the likelihood of complaint--at more than a semester's end distance--was remote, and so it proved.

As you can see from the tag at the end of my post, I'm not all that young (edging close to eighty), but although retired at seventy, continued to adjunct until COVID came on.  Now, every day is like Saturday (aside from doctor appointments).

But the point is that I never much (latterly) used a CMS, aside from posting my lecture PPs.  From the beginning to now I used a--wait for this--Dunbar 5 paper grade book for my grade records.  Yeah, yeah, Excel uber alles.  Well, it worked then and it worked until I finally hung up my jock.  Want to know how "Bill Brown" earned a "D" in the spring of 1968?  Let me grab that grade book that's on a pile next to me.  Yes, there are all his scores, ink on paper.  Now, you might visualize a tower of such, but long ago the admin said, "Throw out anything older than five years," but I kept these two grade books as a souvenir from my first teaching year ("Love is Blue" was the big hit). 

I can still retrieve the grade books from the last year or two of my FT classroom time and all the adjuncting after.  They lie, a small sheaf, in the desk of what I have been honored with as the "Emeritus Office," and since enrollment is down, the likelihood that it will be needed for a new FT is slight.  My chair says--"Keep it."  A real boon.  And there is that drawer full of more recent paper grade books for any future academic archaeologists seeking a contemporary "Tut's Tomb."  Hard for such seekers to delve usefully in The Cloud, I'd think.  I've family ink on paper over a century and a half old.  But who cares about the past, right?  Digital oblivion (when the platform changes) for everyone, right?  Who cares?

[sinenomine]

I still use physical grade books, Juvenal — partly because I started that way and mean to go on, and partly because my institution has used three CMS platforms in my time there, and I've seen the distress when folks lose their data after a software change.

The grade books are also great for looking back at what students I taught and when, given that the electronic records show only the past few years. Physical texts rock!

[mamselle]

Also real, pick-'em-up, hold-'em-in-your-hand books.

Just, any books.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

At first I was excited because I thought this was about the 1973 movie, Paper Moon, which is a forgotten masterpiece.

I use physical, LMS, and Word records for my grades.  I've never once had anyone ask about them except for the grade grubbers.

[mamselle]

+1 to the movie.

Most brilliant use of retrogressive filming and sensitive interactions ever.

Those sepia images still live in my mind.

M.

[Wahoo Redux]

+1 to the movie.

Most brilliant use of retrogressive filming and sensitive interactions ever.

Those sepia images still live in my mind.

M.

You are the coolest ever, mamselle!!!!!!

[mamselle]

<<blush>>

M.

[Harlow2]

Student had taken a leave of absence mid-course, and needed to retrieve their course grades when they returned.  The materials all go into the digital equivalent of deep storage. Although the LOA was only a year, the LMS admins took quite a while to produce the material and were rather resistant to doing so.