The Explainer: How do final marks make their way to ROSI?

ROSI is the Repository of Student Information at the University of Toronto. With students clamouring on social media for their grades, The Varsity sat down with Yvette Ali, the Faculty Registrar, Records & Associate Director at the University of Toronto’s Transcript Centre, to find out how students’ final marks wind their way on to ROSI.

The Varsity: So how does marks’ approval work?

Yvette Ali: What happens is, the instructors submit their marks on the system, the chairs log into the system and approve the marks, and as soon as the marks are approved, we just upload them onto ROSI and it doesn’t take very long. So the turnaround time between when a chair approves a mark and when we upload a mark is usually less than a day.

So one of the things that students may be confused about, but we try to clarify, is that no marks are posted during the Christmas break. No marks are posted over the Christmas break.

I think some students check it, and think their marks are going to change. But it also says on SWS that their marks won’t change and won’t be posted.

TV: So for the teaching assistants, how do they help professors grade marks? Who makes sure that all the marks are fair between all teaching assistants for a course? 

YA: So, the teaching assistants submit all their marks to the instructor and the instructor reviews all the marks and is the one to submit the final marks onto the eMarks system. It is the responsibility of the instructor to ensure that there is consistency among the marks of the various TA’s.
TV: What do you think is a student’s biggest concern about their marks?

YA: Some students ask if their marks can be posted up faster, but we, in the Registrar’s office, turn them around as fast as possible. If it takes longer, the instructor hasn’t submitted them — that’s all. But instructors have a certain amount of time to submit them. It’ seven business days after their final exam or last day of class if they have no final exam.

TV: So submitting their final marks takes seven business days.

YA: Yes. But that’s business days. So it doesn’t count weekends or the time we are closed for Christmas break. Actually, most of the concerns from students are the marks they receive, which has nothing to do with how it’s administered. But there is another whole process for doing that, which is detailed in the Academic Calendar. Miscalculation of grades is very rare.

TV:  So for the most part, it seems like students are just overly anxious or impatient when it comes to marks?

YA: Yes, that’s true, but I think that students feel a lot of pressure when it comes to marks. A lot of students are interested in going to graduate school, things like that. So there is pressure around marks. So it is unfortunate, because students are less focused on the learning. But it’s understandable about why it happens.