Incomplete grades are given to students who are unable to finish work in a given term, typically for medical reasons. Teaching assistants (TAs) typically oversee the management of processing incompletes for these students the following term. This involves communicating both deadlines and remaining work, entering project and exam updates into the previous semester’s grade book, calculating course grades, and passing that information to the previous instructor, who shares it with the registrar. This remarkably manual process is quite daunting for instructors who would like to allow students to work beyond the term to achieve mastery in the course by temporarily assigning them an incomplete grade. This deters CS classes from offering incompletes to support mastery learning.

We are developing GradeSync, a microservice architecture for processing incompletes, capable of entirely removing humans from the loop. Its primary purpose is to reduce staff workload through automation, enabling courses with lower staffing budgets to implement flexible policies regarding incompletes. By supporting post-term grade revisions, the system promotes equity, allowing students the time they may need beyond the semester to achieve mastery. In this poster, we will explore the system’s implementation and its potential impact on faculty workload and student success.