The University of Guam made the transition to an optional pass or fail grading system for the Fåñomnåkan 2020 semester to better support students who are affected by the conversion to online classes due to the spread of COVID-19.
In a letter to students on April 17, 2020, Anita Borja Enriquez, DBA, senior vice president and provost of UOG, proposed three options for students to help minimize impacts to their grade point average. These options are an extension of voluntary withdrawal to April 24, an extension of incomplete grade timeline from one semester to one year and an alternative grading option for undergraduate courses completed during the Fañomnåkan 2020 semester.
Additionally, the three alternate grades that are available to undergraduates who choose the alternative grading option are: Pass (P), Credit (CR) and No Credit (NC).
“The plan reflects the possibility that some students, through no fault of their own, may not achieve the grades they could have if they had attended on-campus classes for the entire semester. The plan also is designed to minimize impacts to GPAs and academic transcripts,” Enriquez said.
According to the letter, the plan was developed through input from faculty surveys, the Faculty Senate, the Faculty Union, UOG’s Student Government Association and the Dean’s Council.
The plan was modeled after grading systems set in place by other universities from the United States.
Student Response
Two Change.org petitions were created by students to gain support for an optional pass or fail grading system and to maintain the current grading system at UOG.
One petition, started by Christian Sazon, a secondary education and English for education major at UOG, began on March 23, 2020, in support of an optional “pass or fail” grading system for the remainder of Fåñomnåkan 2020.
Sazon said that he created the petition based on what he saw in the United States with other universities’ student’s struggle with the online transition and that an optional pass or fail grading system would benefit students who are affected by COVID-19.
Sazon said that he read through various articles on a growing trend of colleges across the United States implementing the pass/fail option. Universities such as Harvard and Pennsylvania State University have done this to help their students who are struggling with the transition online.
“An optional pass/fail will benefit students that are greatly affected by [COVID-19] as this allows students to focus on learning without feeling that everything is lost, or their GPA is ruined,” Sazon said.
This option gives students the flexibility to work around the hindrances caused by COVID-19.
Maintaining the Current Grading System
Additionally, a second petition began a few days later on March 31, 2020, to maintain the current grading system for the remainder of the semester.
Gabriel Borg, a UOG biology major , proposed the idea to help students academically.
For students who are pursuing studies in graduate school or medical school, GPA matters according to Borg.
Like Sazon’s petition, Borg emphasized that providing options for students to have the option of both systems would be most beneficial as it is a “case by case” basis.
UOG’s Reaction to the petitions
On April 2, 2020, a letter to UOG students by Enriquez addressed the requests of the petition and announced that the university had begun meeting with the SGA president Marc Bituin, faculty leaders, deans and UOG president, Dr. Thomas Krise, to discuss the possibility of moving to an alternative grading format.