Making and Grading Exams

Overview

This page discusses software for the making of computer-graded exams. Our standard software can deal with 5-choice multiple-choice questions or with questions requiring a numerical answer in a form like -1.60E-19.
What is the charge of an electron, in Coulombs?
[Alternatively, the software can deal with the 5-choice form as if each question had 31 choices, by binary coding of the five dots, but this has been used only by one person, and is not documented here.]

The Department stockroom stocks two kinds of answer forms, one having only multiple (5) choice questions, up to 200 questions, and the other having up to 15 numerical answer questions and up to 30 multiple (5) choice questions. The grading software supports having multiple versions of the exam, with scrambling the orders of the answers, the questions, or both. Exams could be made in any fashion, but the grading software requires an elaborate specification of how the different versions are related, as well as what the right answers are. This is done automatically if the exam is prepared in grtex.

The aspects of handling an exam are

All of the grading software on the Suns needs to be in your path. This should now be automatic. You used to need to ensure this by executing
dogrek .
When you were done with grading, you needed to exit . But this should no longer be necessary.

(Having trouble accessing the programs? Click Here.)

This is the currently used grading system, which is an outgrowth of a long development process. Some of the older stuff may be useful to access in Old Grading System.

Grtex:

Grtex actually consists of two parts. The first is a package of latex macros which formalizes the writing of exam questions These macros permit making many forms of problems, including figures. The problems will all be either multiple-choice (with four or five answers), or numerical with three significant figures, exponents, and signs. A full description of how to write questions for such exams, and how to put them together into an exam, is given in the example/documentation examexample. You should also look at the latex source code for that file, examexample.tex, as it shows explicitly how things are done.

examexample is the main documentation for grtex, but there are others. There is also information about converting figures to postscript (which is needed for grtex). See Grtex: a system for making up computer-graded exams in multiple versions

The second part of grtex is a program, also alled grtex, which reads the exam file you prepared according to the specifications above, and another file, called the want file, which specifies the parameters of the exam. The want file tells which questions to include, how many versions to make, what kind of scrambling is wanted, and other parameters. These are spelled out in The Want File. Once you have a want file and a source for the questions, follow the instructions in Running Grtex.

Producing the Exams:

Once you have produced an exam by running grtex, you will have a key file and a .tex output file with a name of the form myexam.tex. Run latex myexam, and then dvips myexam (after checking it out with xdvi myexam), and this will print all versions of your exam. There is lots of advice in Producing and Administering the Exam.

Reading the Mark Sense Forms (GREAD)

After you give the exam, you will have the mark sense forms which need to be read into the computer. You should also have information about the students, including their Rutgers ID number and their exam codes. You (or your administrative assistant TA ???) should follow the instructions in Using GREAD. This will give you a file called something like myfile.ms, which you need for the next step

Correcting the Mark Sense Forms (grfix)

Students often make mistakes in entering their names, ID's, or exam codes, which are essential for the grading. Also section numbers can be used. The program grfix will help you fix these before you grade the exam, which will make life much easier. You will need the information mentioned for GREAD (the student's names, IDs, exam codes, and possibly section numbers). For details see Using Grfix. This will combine the key file from grtex and the mark-sense form file myexam.ms into myexam.ok, which will serve as the input for grading.

Grading the Exams (GRAD):

The myexam.ok from grfix is the input for the grading program grad. Grad will produce a lis file myexam.lis together with other files you specify. You should specify that you want a score file myexam.sco and a sheet file myexam.she. Other options are explained in Using GRAD.

After you Goofed - repairing problems

You were totally irresponsible and gave a question with no right answers, or two right answers, or ... What to do now? See Fixing Mistakes in the Exam.

Entering the Grades

Most of our instructors use the gradebook program written by Baki Brahmia. Your exam grades can be entered into the gradebook if you made the myexam.sco file when running grad. You can also show the students how they did if you made a myexam.she file. See the instructions for the gradebook

Finishing up --- you are not quite done!

 In order to accumulate questions that can be useful to others in the Department, you need to send your exam information to the maintainer of the Department database. That means Joel Shapiro, at least at present. Please send him
Criticisms or additions to this page should be sent to
Joel Shapiro
(shapirophysics) Last modified: Wed Nov 11 13:58:27 2009