Last spring, the Mississippi State University Student Association developed a resolution “that Mississippi State implement a website containing grade distribution data sorted by course code and professor similar to that used by the University of Kentucky.”

In response, the administration evaluated tools such as this at several other institutions and developed a prototype that was circulated among faculty at the beginning of the fall semester. MSU’s Robert Holland Faculty Senate developed a task force to evaluate this tool and recommend changes for improvement. At its November meeting, the Senate approved the task force recommendations, including “the website release the grade distributions on A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, F’s, and W’s in place of the course grade point average”; to leave off any student survey questions in the tool; and to “recommend completing the student surveys during class time at the beginning of a class to increase student participation.”

The administration wholeheartedly agrees with the changes recommended and is now ready to provide this to all faculty, staff and students at MSU. The site requires an MSU Net ID to access and will only be available within the MSU community.

The site can be viewed at https://ir.msstate.edu/research/grades.php.

“This is an excellent example of the MSU family working together to develop an outcome that no one segment would’ve created. It also embodies the shared governance approach that is a hallmark of MSU,” said MSU Provost and Executive Vice President David Shaw.