As was communicated last week by the Provost, new academic policies have been put in place for the spring 2020 semester in response to COVID-19. The Provost’s office has provided guidance documents at https://provost.illinois.edu/policies/policies/academic-policy-modifications-spring-2020/.
While considering some of these changes, several questions and requests have arisen that we would like to address. In particular these questions focus on key differences between Credit/No Credit (CR/NC) and Pass/No Pass (PP/NP) options.
Credit/No Credit is a student-initiated and student-controlled process. An individual student elects the CR/NC option without instructor knowledge that they have done so. The instructor will submit a final grade for the student and provided it is a C- or above, the student receives credit. A grade below a C- will be denoted as NC on the transcript and no credit is earned for the course.
Students may elect this option up until April 30, 2020 for Spring 2020 courses. All CR/NC forms for undergraduate students in the College go through SAAO for approval. Prior to being approved students are informed of the implications of this choice (e.g., course is not counted in the calculation of GPA, cannot be taken as an honors course). Information about CR/NC at the graduate level can be found at this link: https://emails.illinois.edu/newsletter/715733.html
The PP/NP option is faculty-initiated and when approved, applies to all students enrolled in that course. It is a new designation created by the Registrar specifically for use during the COVID-19 crisis. With this option, an instructor determines what would be considered a passing grade. A course designated as PP/NP is not counted in the calculation of a student’s GPA and the transcript denotes a PP or NP grade.
The Provost has asked that the PP/NP option “only be exercised in cases where the modification in course assessment makes it extremely difficult to fairly follow our standard grading system.” It is our view that this option is selected only as a last resort. A PP/NP grade may affect students in a variety of ways. Many students need a letter grade for the purposes of meeting probation requirements, transferring between programs, applying for teaching licensure or graduate school, or seeking employment. Further, those doing well in a course may object to having their choice to receive a letter grade taken away from them. Students in these circumstances might have grounds for a capricious grading case as defined in the student code, “the assignment of a grade representing a substantial departure from the instructor’s previously announced standards.”
For a course to be approved for PP/NP the change must be initiated by the instructor of record and it must go through an approval process at the Department, College and Campus levels. An overview of this process can be found at https://uofi.app.box.com/s/7vkq5q91idhouw64lkmd4w0uj8k49pxl (You may need to open Box to access this file).
Instructors requesting PP/NP should not communicate this to their students until the official notification that the Registrar’s office has implemented the change in the system.