Infinite Campus Brings Unwanted Problems to Student Grades
January 14, 2020
The Wauwatosa School District made the decision to switch from the Powerschool grading website to the Infinite Campus grading website for the 2019-2020 school year.
Infinite Campus has been giving Tosa West teachers many problems during the year.
“I think Infinite Campus being new it’s taken us a while to work. Get the kinks out. And hopefully, we have a fix in place that shows the best representation of student grades. There are a lot of different screens that teachers can enter grades on. I wish they could consolidate things a little more to make entering grades easier for teachers. And I wish that students had an easier way to see their grades,” said Math Teacher Amy Fetherston.
Infinite Campus has also been giving Tosa West students many issues this year as well.
“If you want me to be honest, Infinite Campus is bad compared to PowerSchool. Powerschool was way more organized it showed all your classes and what your grade was, and then at the bottom it showed your GPA. And if you want to know what you got on a summative, instead of having to look through every single different project or test you did in like infinite campus and PowerSchool all you’d have to do is just click on your grade and it would show you all your summatives and formatives as you click on the grid, ” said Junior Ethan Peplinski.
The main problem of Infinite campus is that Tosa West students can’t see their own Grade Point Average (GPA) on the website.
“Infinite Campus doesn’t show your GPA, so you can’t know what your GPA is. And if you want to know you have to find a whole you have to go to a whole different website, just to get a GPA calculator. You have to type in your class name, how many credits it is, and what’s your grade, which is kind of a lot of work. While with PowerSchool your GPA was just at the bottom,” said Peplinski.
Students believe that Infinite Campus can work on the layout of grades.
“I’d like to see Infinite Campus do a better job of letting students see their individual grades because sometimes I don’t always get to see them. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I don’t,” said Senior Lucas Metzner.
Some students are very loyal to Powerschool.
“I have been using Powerschool since 7th grade and I was upset with the change to Infinite Campus this year. After a month of using Infinite Campus, I wanted to go back,” said Metzner.
Even though many Tosa West students and staff are frustrated with the switch there are a few features that some people believe is an improvement.
“I would say Infinite Campus does have a nice layout with a drop-down menu on the left side, showing you your schedule, your home, most of which PowerSchool had, but it’s more organized with Infinite Campus,” said Metzner.
The main question to Tosa West students is should the Wauwatosa School District switch to PowerSchool next year or wait for Infinite Campus to improve and get fixed.
“I believe that if Infinite Campus can fix the main problems with grading and students GPA’s, then I wouldn’t have a problem with Infinite Campus for the next semester or school year,” said Tosa West Freshman James Gentil.
Tosa West student Lucas Metzner has a different view of the situation.
“I have been frustrated with the new grading application this year as it’s given many issues I don’t get to see my overall GPA. I don’t always know what my grades are because of the many issues that this new program presents. It has an overall different feel, It can be frustrating. Since it’s new to the Wauwatosa School District, it has had crashes where we couldn’t see our grades, when it’s critical to see them. I’d like to see Infinite Campus put our GPA in there. I’d also like to see Infinite Campus do a better job of letting students see their individual grades. If Infinite Campus doesn’t fix these problems then I would want to have Powerschool back for next year for other students.”
Infinite Campus is looked at differently through the eyes of both students and teachers. But one thing is for sure, Infinite Campus isn’t going away this year.
