Table of contents
About GradeWatchDistribution
Login page
Student grade report
Login error
Special reports
About GradeWatch
GradeWatch is an intranet software package, which utilizes a web server to display students' grades. The only user side software required is an Internet browser capable of displaying HTML tables. Netscape Navigator 3.0 or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 would do. Refer to the owner's reference for server's requirements. The login screen is generated by the package and consists of the course name, user name and password. After successful login student will see a table with information corresponding to his or her grades and common area corresponding to the course grade statistics. Instructor has access to each student grades, all students grades at once, can e-mail grades to one student or all of them, generate a mailing list from the roster, and access the software usage log for the particular course. All of that with one single power user password that can be set separately for each course. Please read the owner's manual for more information on installing the database.Distribution
GradeWatch package was written by Aleksander Malinowski and Bogdan M. Wilamowski. It can be distributed freely under either GNU or Artistic license agreement. The other software mentioned here may be copyrighted by their producers. The distribution file is available from the main help web page.Login page
Depending on configuration one of two following login pages is generated by the GradeWatch.GradeWatch login with course menu
The figure below shows the default login web page generated by the GradeWatch when no particular course is passed as a parameter from the referring web page. Click on the image above to enlarge it. This example page can be also found here.
Courses
Students have choice among all courses listed in the configuration file. Only one course can be selected at a time from the menu. The menu can hold unlimited number of courses. however, only first three positions are visible. Since the order of listings corresponds to the order of courses recorded in the configuration file it is advised to keep the current courses at the beginning.Name
Each student logins using his or her family name. If family name consists of more than one part white space should be either skipped or replaced by underscore character _ depending on the convention used by instructor in the database. Underscore character is preferred and is automatically replaced by a space character in the grade printouts and e-mail. Student names are recognized regardless of capitalization. The database handles multiple students with the same family name provided each of them has different password.There are three special names available only for the course instructor: admin, emial, and logfile. See further part of this manual for more information.
ID number
Student ID number or SSN can be used as a password. In general any sequence of characters can be used (with exception of TAB and quotes.) It is matched against the sequence of characters listed in the database. At this moment there is no option for students to change their passwords in other way than by contacting the instructor who would alter the database record for them.GradeWatch login for a particular course
The figure below shows the default login web page generated by the GradeWatch when a particular course is passed as a parameter after ? from the referring web page. This example page can be also found here.
Form parameters
A student has to enter the family name and his student ID. The functionality of these data fields is exactly the same as in the case of the previous login page.Login page customization
Refer to the owner's manual for details on customization of the login web pages.Student grade report
The following figure shows sample student grade report. Refer to grades database file format for information how to create grade information for each student. The figure to the left shows a sample grade report for one of students form the demo course. You can inspect the database entry by looking at the image of the spreadsheet file.
Course name
The course name is displayed in the same way as it is entered in the GradeWatch configuration file. The page title is centered. You can customize the printout by editing the PERL script once for all courses.Students name
The student's name is printed in the order with family name last - opposite to the format of the database in which the family name is listed first, and then first and middle name. Underscore characters are replaced by space.Update date
The update date is acquired automatically from operating system time stamp for the text format course database. It can be altered from the level of the operating system if really necessary.Grade table
In case of each student only the second column of the table will look different. The date above the tableStudent e-mail
Student e-mail is optional and is displayed only if one is entered into the database. Most of the web browsers are capable of running your e-mail software if you click on the link to the e-mail address.E-mail me my grades
This button submits another request to your web server. Upon clicking student will have the text version of the table with grades sent from you to his address. The grade report is not actually sent from you but from the web server with your e-mail address as the return address.Login error
In case of selecting wrong course section or making typo in the family name or ID number a web page with appropriate information is displayed to the student. An example error page is displayed in the figure to the left. For the sake of security no specific reason is given whether the family name or password is incorrect.
Common student mistakes
During two years of using the GradeWatch system it was determined that the two most common login errors are- Entering full name (first and family name) instead of family name only. Surprisingly students do not read the error message with information about common mistakes before they cannot login a few times in a row.
- Incorrect ID number, especially omitting the initial zero in the student ID. In case when SSN is used by the university as ID some students use dashes or spaces to separate groups of digits. The ID number is considered as password and is matched against the database record as a sequence of characters. Obviously skipping initial zero or adding dashes results in completely different password although the number remains the same.
Special reports
The following special types of reports are available from GradeWatch for each course provided that the user logs in with the course instructor's password. On information how to set this special password refer to the owner's manual.|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
| Instructor grade report for all students | admin | sample overall report | sample overall report |
| Instructor grade report for one student | student's name | sample grade report | sample grade report |
| Course mailing list | sample mailing list | sample mailing list | |
| GradeWatch activity report for a course per student | stat | sample student activity report | sample student activity report |
| GradeWatch login error report for a course | logfile | sample activity log report | sample activity log report |
