The EEE Legacy system, including EEE Legacy GradeBook, will be shutting down in November. We and others are sorry to see this historic homegrown system retire, but there are a few key reasons that it must. Below are a few questions that we receive regularly.
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Why can’t the EEE Legacy system stick around for those that want to keep using it?
The November 2020 retirement timeline was chosen because we will not be able to guarantee the security of data in EEE Legacy GradeBook after this time. Due to the age of the Legacy EEE codebase, it will no longer be possible to carry out security patches beginning December 2020. This timeline is not something that is within our control to change and is designated by the PHP programming language development team.
The interdependent architecture of Legacy EEE also does not allow for GradeBook to be extracted as a stand-alone tool. Further, this aging architecture would have been ill-suited for the campuswide move to remote instruction in Winter Quarter 2020.
If I download my grades data, should I store it in a particular way?
Yes. We recommend you keep only what you could conceivably need in the future, and that you follow UCI’s best practices for security, including not sharing your passwords with others. More information can be found here: https://security.uci.edu/secure-computer/index.html
What if the EEE GradeBook works better for me than the one in Canvas?
We are very proud of EEE GradeBook and are also sorry to see it go. Canvas’ gradebook seems to be an adequate if surely imperfect substitute for most needs. We are aware that GradeBook performed better for very large classes, and was more feature-complete in some key areas, like curving grades, uploading comments along with grades, and visualization of grades. We continue to advocate for improvements with Instructure, the company that builds Canvas.
Could you rebuild the EEE Legacy GradeBook?
Since the architecture of Legacy EEE is highly interdependent, and pulling the Legacy Gradebook out is not possible, any replacement EEE Gradebook would have to be built from scratch. The original Gradebook was built incrementally over several years. It would take approximately two years of development to reach feature parity with the Legacy Gradebook.
While building a Gradebook is feasible, it must be balanced against other instructional technology development needs and the practicality of duplicating much of the functionality already available in the Canvas Gradebook.
We hope that the above helps answer why the EEE Legacy system is shutting down in November, and why we made the move to Canvas. If you have further questions or concerns, please email eee-support@uci.edu.