Forum .LRN Q&A: ANN Evaluation / Grading package ready for testing (alpha)

Try it standalone by now, soon you'll be able with .LRN

Some info about what the package does:
*Lets the administrator to add grade types with a percentage for each grade type
*Add assignments for each grade type
*Assign grades in groups
*Admin the students groups for the tasks
*Grade the students
*See grades reports and audit info
*Lets the students to turn in their tasks and see their grades and comments on the evaluations

Soon we'll:
*integrate the evaluation packate with the notification package
*add some features like grade the studens with a csv file and more audit options
*finish the requirements posted in the rfc for this package (https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=155046)
*move the sources to CVS /contrib
*i18n
*port it to oracle
*release a beta a version
*provide portlets for .LRN
*better tested
*good documentation (technical + end user)

Future will be to integrate it with assessments, for automatic feed of grades to it.

Try it here:  http://smeagol.galileo.edu:8010/evaluation/
admin-user: mailto:admin-test@test.com pass: admin-test
user: mailto:test@test.com pass:test

Please post any comment, bug, suggestion in this thread.

Developed by me, with design / develop help & suggestions from Don and Rocael. This work has been done at Galileo university, as part of the E-LANE project, released as GPL v.2 or above.

Note: we've been using this system for more than 2 years with great succes at Galileo (on ACES).

I also added some features, such as download all the answers of a task in one file and upload an assignment in multiple classes at the same time.

I also integrated the package with dotlrn and made a couple of portlets that display the information of the package. This portlets show almos the same information of the index pages of the package, and you can do almost the same things from the portlets (add tasks, evaluate the students, etc)

The test users are:

- Professor: mailto:admin-test@test.com / pass admin-test
- Student: mailto:test@test.com / pass test

The demo site is: http://smeagol.galileo.edu:8010/

Please feel free to test the package and to report any bug/suggestion.

Thanks!

Yes, it was down because of an elecricity problem, but now it is up again. There are some classes already created (mate, mate 2 and mate 4) with a few studens, so you can test the package there.

Regards

Like it. Nice work. It is going to be very useful for us.

Have one class that I am TA in right now where it would make things a lot easier. There is one part of the class that I could not model though:

Part of the grade in the class is based on participation (in the discussion for example). When I add participation as a new "evaluation type" an assignment automatically appears called "participation", but "participation" is hard to submit as an assignment so I was wondering if the admin of the class has a way of "unmapping" an evaluation and a task/assignment or a way of creating an evaluation without automatically creating an assignment? I would like to be able to evaluate each student on participation without it showing up as a specific assignment.

I understand perfectly what you are talking about, it has happened before here in Galileo University. The way we solve the problem is:

Add the assignment setting to false the radio botton where you are asked to decide whether the assignment will be submited online or not ("Will the task be submitted online?"). This way, the students will not be able to submit an answer and you will be able to include "participation" in the grade of the course and to assign a grade to each student. "participation" will appear as an assignment though, because it is part of the grade of the course.

I hope this hepls, regards!

Yes you should.

Having each evaluation tightly wired to an assignment that shows up in that portlet is a mistake.

We want to be able to evaluate an oral presentation, a quiz, a wimpy point, a blog posting, a forums thread, they way a student did the tango, etc. without specifically listing those things in the assignment portlet.

It just doesn't make sense for _everything_ to show up as an "assignment".

We are using the evaluation package in Galileo University and I have done some improvements and bug fixing, such as:

- Performance improvements, specially in postgresql queries
- Option (parameter) to store files in the file system added
- Grades reports improved
- Bugs creating students groups fixed
- Integration with calendar added (I didn't find any service contract in the calendar package, so I mapped the cal_items with a mapping table to the assignments)
- More bugs fixed and visualization/navigation improved

The evaluation package is very stable right now (version 0.3d), and it is being used by all the classes at Galileo University.

Please feel free to download and test the package, and to make any comments/suggestions about it.

Regards,

jopez

You can download it from CVS (HEAD), you need to have dotLRN installed and to download evaluation, evaluation-portlet and dotlrn-evaluation, and please feel free to report any bug/suggestion/problem.

regards, Jose

I just wanted to anounce a spanish tutorial for the evaluation package. It is a tutorial designed for the staff of the course (i.e. professors, students, TAs). You can find it at http://www.galileo.edu/doc/evaluation

Regards,

jopez

Furthermore, is anyone creating a SCORM course on how to make use of .LRN as a Professor ?