I have used several commercial programs - these would be packaged with test generation software. The one I like best is part of the Diploma package and is called Gradebook. About the only advantage compared to your system is that you don't have to create the excel commands.
A small 'sidebar' here. I have heard some of you talk about posting student grades on internet/intranet. Does anyone have a pretty simple algorithms for setting this up? I use FrontPage and maintain course WebPages and would like to set up some password protected system for posting individual student grades. Thanks, _______________________ Bill Goss College of the Rockies Box 8500, Cranbrook, BC 1-877-489-2687, ext.324 (toll free) -----Original Message----- From: Maxwell Gwynn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 11:43 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences Subject: Grading programs (was: New teacher) Beth and others: I must not have been paying attention when grading programs were discussed on TIPS, as I've been relatively satisfied with using spreadsheet programs for grading purposes. I'm always open to technology that would make my life simpler, however! As someone who has always used a spreadsheet program (most recently Microsoft Excel), I'm not familiar with computerized grading programs. What advantages and disdavantages do these programs have over Excel and Lotus, for example? I find it quite easy in Excel to compute overall grades (in percentages, which I convert by hand to letter grades) and listings which I can post on my door for students to see. I can sort by name or ID number, and calculate means and standard deviations for exams and assignments. I'm not terribly pleased with the graphing functions; simple frequency histograms are not easy to produce and manipulate, so I typically copy the variable and paste it in to an SPSS data file. One thing I like about using Excel is that my TA's are typically familiar enough with this program that they can work with it when entering grades. As well, they usually have this program on their own computers, which wouldn't be the case with commercial software packages. Further, when I run in to questions for which the help function doesn't help, I can ask colleagues for assistance, since most of them are also familiar with Excel. What can grading programs do above and beyond the functions mentioned above? And what other grading programs (freeware, shareware, or commercial) do others recommend? What sort of learning curve is involved in each? -Max Gwynn On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Beth Benoit wrote: > Hi Jessey, SNIP > 7. Get a computerized grading program. WELL worth it. We've discussed > computerized grading programs on TIPS before. I use "Grade Quick" - it's at > least 8 years old and I love it. I'm sure there must be newer versions. You > can enter information by just typing the first couple of letters of a > student's name and it skips to that student's records. Has attendance, > grades, weighting of grades, etc. Also helpful when students quibble about > what their grade averages out to. (See TIPS for last few days...) Just > show them the computerized printout. Maxwell Gwynn, PhD [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Psychology (519) 884-0710 ext 3854 Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 Canada --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
