Baruch College should mandate professors to upload students’ grades on Blackboard — not other platforms — for the ease of both students and professors.

Blackboard is a one-stop shop for all that is related to classes, including assignments, feedback and grades.

It is unnecessarily inconvenient for students to have their grades scattered across email, Blackboard, personal websites or other platforms.

Blackboard keeps grades for each assignment in one place. If a student wishes to assess their progress in a class, they can easily view all their grades at once.

Another unique aspect of Blackboard is that it calculates a final grade.

Professors can post assignments in advance, allowing students to view the estimation of their final grade as the semester progresses and how many opportunities they have left in the semester to raise that grade.

Students shouldn’t have to search through a flood of emails in their inboxes to determine their progress in a class.

Freshmen students are trained on how to use Blackboard during orientation and First-Year Seminar classes.

Resources such as “how-to” guides are available to professors. Live support is also available, even on the weekends and after-hours on weeknights.

While Blackboard doesn’t publicly disclose its package’s price, the average cost for a university is $160,000 per year, according to research conducted in 2006. Despite this not being a recent estimate, it can be assumed that it costs CUNY a significant amount.

Considering that time, resources and funds are poured into integrating Blackboard into the CUNY system, it is clear that it should be used across the board.

Blackboard is also the ideal platform because once a grade is posted, students can access it in three ways. In addition to emails, students receive notifications from the app and can also access them on the website.

In contrast, students may not be notified if a grade is posted on a third-party website. If it’s sent via email, it’s not guaranteed that they are notified by their phones.

A mandate to use Blackboard for all classes must be put in place so that there is a uniform method to access class materials.