Electronic Grading of Lab Reports

Online Grading: Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electronic Grading of Lab Reports

Students have been directed how to submit their lab reports electronically. When they follow the instructions, their reports will be placed in a directory set aside for your lab section. To view the reports, log in to your ECE unix account and enter the following command:

cd /data/classes/ece<class>/labs/

e.g., if you teach a ECE 3714 lab,

cd /data/classes/ece3714/labs/

From this point you can see all of the sections:

>ls -l total 32 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Aug 16 16:06 01 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Aug 16 16:06 02 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Aug 16 16:06 03 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Aug 16 16:06 04 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 4 23:54 05 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 4 22:40 06 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 4 15:47 07 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 4 20:04 08 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 5 14:07 09 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 5 14:04 10 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 5 15:39 11 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 5 00:24 12 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 5 16:49 13 drwxrws---+ 2 root dept 512 Sep 5 17:39 14 drwxrws---+ 4 root dept 512 Jun 1 11:48 archived drwxrws---+ 2 root ece3714adm 512 Aug 16 16:06 graded

Notice the directory named graded. This is where you will save the students' reports after you have graded them.

To access the reports for the sections you teach, change to the directory corresponding to the section number. E.g., if you teach section 06, enter the following command,

cd 06

and you will see all the submissions made by your students to date:

>ls -l total 898 -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 11264 Sep 3 14:00 bas8-1.doc -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 24064 Aug 31 14:12 bsm24-1.doc -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 27136 Sep 4 19:02 djh63-1.doc -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 23552 Aug 31 16:12 jdl9-1.doc -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 305177 Aug 20 15:14 jlb3-1.pdf -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 25088 Aug 27 13:48 jpg60-1.doc -rw-r-----+ 1 httpd dept 27648 Sep 4 22:40 rwj8-6.doc

Note the dates and times. They indicate the last time the student entered the data. You cannot change those dates. This also means that you cannot change or edit the versions in this directory. You will need to copy the files from this directory to your unixhome directory in order to edit/grade them. Also notice that some of the files have .doc (Microsoft Word files) filename extensions, and some have .pdf (Adobe Acrobat files). If they are .doc files, you will need to open them in Microsoft Word, and then write them as .pdf files before you will be able to do the electronic grading.

Once the files are in .pdf format, load them into Adobe Acrobat, and enter your comments, highlights, and grading marks. When you have finished making your marks, save them in the /data/classes/ece<class>/labs/graded/<section>/ directory.

Every time you save things in the graded directory, you have to set the permissions of the files in that directory properly, so they can be viewed on the web. To make the changes, return to your unix session and enter the following command (where <class> is your course number and <section> is your section),

chmod 644 /data/classes/ece<class>/labs/graded/<section>/*

This is a generic way to set the permissions so that the web server can read them. You may see error messages like the following for all files that you do not own:

chmod: WARNING: can't change twg1-1.pdf

This is a normal error message. Unix will not let anyone change the permissions of a file that they do not own.

Once you have changed the file modes in this way, you are finished with the electronic grading process.