As the first week of the semester comes to a close, most of us have put the previous semester behind us. However, for some students and professors, the books are not quite closed on last semester.

The deadline for instructors to turn in final grades for last semester was the Tuesday following finals week, a rather tight deadline for some, especially those with Friday exams.

At the end of last semester, there were a reported 980 missing grades out of the 104,000 that were expected by the deadline. Currently, only 45 grades remain outstanding. Given the demands of a short grading deadline, the possibilities of unforeseen technical difficulties, and the care that many instructors take in grading each of their assignments, the Miami Student editorial board applauds professors for having a very low percentage of “N” grades.

Professors with Friday finals often feel stressed about the deadline because of the short amount of time they have, especially when it comes to grading final projects or written essays, which require more time to grade than something that can be fed through a scantron reader.

Independent studies may not have the same cut-and-dry grading rubric as traditional classes do.

However, if the problem lies in professors simply not keeping up with their grades throughout the semester, or being unfamiliar or unwilling to use the technologies afforded to them, that presents another issue.

Professors should tailor their grading schedules with the deadline to ensure they have ample enough time to get their grades in promptly. Imagine if a professor did not use Niihka or an electronic gradebook throughout the entire semester. They would have to go through and manually add an entire semesters worth of grades and a final at the very end of the course. Playing catch up with technology creates a backup in turning in final grades.

Most students have had at least one professor who refused to use email, or did not understand Niihka for keeping up-to-date grades. We understand that the significant technological changes at Miami over the past few years can be overwhelming, but they cannot be ignored.

For many professors, the fast-paced change of technology at Miami has not affected their ability to keep up with their grading. For the small percentage that have had issues with missing grades, they could be remedied by the university providing further instruction on how to use the new Miami Gmail and Niihka, which are both critical for communication between the student and the professor. Professors and students both play an equal role in getting grades in on time.