On Wed, 9 Jul 2008 13:48:41 +1000, "Owen Townend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > > 1) I think not making students submit assignment in one format > > (.doc for example) will be beneficial. Openoffice formats > > (.sxw) are rejected simply because the markers do not think it's > > part of their job to install openoffice on their box. why? > > > > This is strange, are you a recent uni graduate yourself? I ask because > I am currently studying and my experience has been that reports could > be written in anything and had to be submitted basically in a format > that the lecturer could read. Most of the letcturers were open to > installing standard/free software if need be. To me .doc, .sxw, .ppt > etc are formats for authoring, but why would you submit a report in > one when the marker has _no_ need to edit your work? PDF is a format > that is ideally suited to the job and this is what I submitted in.
At my former uni I had to submit all assignments in either MS .doc format or RTF as the file was then submitted to various anti-plagiarism systems such as Turn-it-in [1]. So not much choice in formats there. I also had great problems getting Firefox to co-operate with the online learning system (WebCT Vista). Would keep crashing out when running the required Java app, some research showed that this is a known bug with WebCT Vista and Firefox. Was happy to run the Linux version of SPSS, but told it is not available through Australian retailers (hello uni bookshop). Programs I did find helpful (apart from OpenOffice) - dia for diagrams and flowcharts - Scribus for laying out large posters for presentations - Zotero plugin for Firefox - AustLii toolbar plugin for Firefox (Australian legislation database) Cheers Mark -- ubuntu-au mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au
