Aeries, the app that many different districts use to display student grades, has been integrated as a part of our everyday learning for years. With almost 1,000 schools using Aeries, The system of on demand  grading has put itself into many students’ lives. Essentially teachers input students’ grades into the app on their end, as the compilation of each individual assignment and the points that it is worth, and students are able to see a live grade based off of the current amount of points in the grade book. Students can check this grade at any time as well as calculate  an estimated grade with the calculator function. Assignments can be Edited, deleted, and added, in order for students to view what their grade may have been.

As a student within PYLUSD since kindergarten, I have been able to check my grades on Aeries for as long as I can remember. There have been times where I’ve checked Aeries and I’m happy,  end times where I’ve been unhappy. As students it is our job to monitor grades, but to what extent is it helpful or unhelpful?

The most common reason that students are going to be checking Aeries is after a test that they have been studying for. The teacher eventually is going to enter it in and students can, most of the time, see how they did before a teacher shows it in class. In terms of looking at areas for testing scores, the reason that Aeries can be helpful is by showing the student that their hard work of studying has paid off. Students may feel instant relief by seeing a good grade, and an overall grade boost. However, students can also have added stress because their grade will drop a mediately if they did not do as well as they were hoping on the test. Some problems that may arise are that teachers have not decided a curve yet, causing students grades to be temporarily lower, and the grade being entered before test corrections are given if that’s the case. This causes stress on the student to have to worry about their grade increasingly during the period  of time between taking the test and waiting for the teacher to enter in the grade.  students are constantly checking the app to see if a teacher has updated their grade, and the second that one student sees the great has been updated it causes a wave of every single student checking. 

The other reason for students checking Aeries is for the grades on assignments. Aeries provides its most helpful function to give students what grades they got on their assignments and teachers don’t always have to give the students their assignment back with their grade, only the grade in aeries. It saves class time for the teacher, and consolidates all assignment grades into one area. 

A final reason students use the app is to calculate their predicted grade. The function is available for students to add or remove assignments and edit the amount of points in the grade book. From there, they can see the grade that they would have with that amount of points. The positive to this is that it serves its function, you can see what could happen based on your predicted performance. The downside of this is that students get a false sense of safety that they only have to score a certain amount to get a grade they want. This can lead to less performance than expected, due to studying or focusing less on the content. Additionally, it can cause obsession for students to get their grade how they want by the point. This interrupts the true purpose of education, to learn the content, and causes students to focus on the points in their grade book more. 

Overall there are a variety of ways to view the Aeries app, due to its many benefits and disadvantages for students. It is clear that by making our grades so accessible, students are likely to put a majority of their focus on their grades, and not learn the content for a better rounded education. So the next time you are thinking about checking what you got on your test, consider if you care more about the points in your grade, or how well you learned the content.