An EECS Grading Google Sheet

This past semester I realized that I was struggling to get grades out to students in a timely fashion. Every semester I start the grading spreadsheet from scratch and add to it as we progress from one assessment to the next. I populate a Google Spreadsheet with the official student list (the class list post) and have the TAs grade directly in it as that's what they've told me they prefer to use. After that I was having to transfer grades from the TA Google Sheet into my own Excel spreadsheet. From there I was then exporting to eClass, GAM, ePost and to our Department. In 2026, some other factors came into play (colleagues' Bitlocker-secured computers got wiped out by a failed management-imposed update and one TA simply decided to not return grades. At all.) So I went from treading water on grading to drowning in late grades.

For anyone who thinks that I should just enter grades directly into our LMS, eClass, let's be real. The LMS has a terrible grade book. Plus we've always need to maintain our own spreadsheets because there is no direct connection between the LMS grade book and either the final grade system, GAM, or our accreditation spreadsheets.

So, I set about to make a better spreadsheet to calculate and maintain grades. While I would have preferred to use Excel because I can run it locally on my laptop, two factors made me switch to Google Sheets:

1. The teaching assistants prefer to use Google Sheets in the labs and for general grading, and
2. Excel struggles with doing look-ups on numeric student IDs. It gets confused between numeric values and strings that contain numeric values. This is problematic with importing things like Scantron results. Google Sheets doesn't choke on those.

So, Google Sheets it is. The goal was to make a Google Sheet that I hope will help me keep on top of grading next year. Some features:

1. The student list will be pasted into the first worksheet
2. All assessments are already included
3. Each assessment is its own worksheet.
4. Final tallies are ready and a look-up table worksheet will automatically assign letter grades
5. For scantrons, a lookup table will reorder the student results to match the class list order (based on numeric student ID)
6. Student last names are capitalized automatically from the classlist
7. The Course Performance Summary is its own worksheet and auto-populates. It also doubles as the output for our EECS department grades page, ePost.
8. I can lock down worksheets or sections of worksheets that I don't want my TAs to touch.

The grading sheet assumes

1. We use the official class list format
2. searching is done by numeric student ID
3. There are five flipped classes during the semester
   • The two lowest FC grades are automatically removed
4. There are twelve labs
   • The two lowest lab grades are automatically removed
5. There are two midterms during the semester
   • Each midterm has a multiple choice component (scantron) and a written component
6. There is a final exam
   • The final exam, like the midterms, has a scantron and a written part
7. There is a project that is rubric-based
8. One spreadsheet per course section
   • Each spreadsheet focuses on one section, so multiple spreadsheets are needed if there are more than one section.
   • For multi-section assessments paste all the data in
     • So project and final exam data are all pasted in and a look-up function filters out the students that don't belong.

What's missing?

1. I'm missing a look-up for connecting grades to learning outcomes.
2. There is no output for the final letter grade spreadsheet that is to be input to the GAM system.
3. An "early warning" alert dashboard to tell me when underperforming students are in trouble.

The page is located here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qCvgGguizfFRzO4-N5GCpSdhiKEFeTXy2O_0QIaHKis/edit?usp=sharing

Send me an email when you find errors or typos... I'm sure there are some, in spite of me trying to find them.

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James Andrew Smith is a Professional Engineer and Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of York University’s Lassonde School, with degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta and McGill University.  Previously a program director in biomedical engineering, his research background spans robotics, locomotion, human birth, music and engineering education. While on sabbatical in 2018-19 with his wife and kids he lived in Strasbourg, France and he taught at the INSA Strasbourg and Hochschule Karlsruhe and wrote about his personal and professional perspectives.  James is a proponent of using social media to advocate for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion as well as evidence-based applications of research in the public sphere. You can find him on Twitter.  You can find him on BlueSky. Originally from Québec City, he now lives in Toronto, Canada.