Physics Online Gradebook

created by: Baki Brahmia

Mohan Kalelkar 06-Jan-2009

  1. Send email to Mohan Kalelkar requesting that an online gradebook be initialized for your course. Let him know the course number and the name of the gradebook administrator. In most courses the administrator would be the course lecturer, but in our large intro courses, alternate possibilities are the course administrator or course assistant.
  2. After Mohan initializes your gradebook, bring up https://eas.rutgers.edu/eas-faculty-staff.html and click the link for Class Rosters / Grade Submission. Log in, enter the information for your course roster, make sure you check the "Alphabetical Roster" checkbox, and click on Retrieve Roster. In the upper right, click the link to download Comma Separated Text (txt) and then save it on your computer.
  3. Bring up https://gbook.physics.rutgers.edu/gbook/admin.pl?XXX&semester=YYYYYYYYY where XXX is course number (e.g. 361) and YYYYYYYYY is the current semester (e.g. spring2009 using lowercase). Follow the instructions and fill in all fields. In the final step you'll browse to supply the path for your class roster that you downloaded to your hard drive.
  4. You'll be asked for the number of teachers and their names. Note that the administrator counts as one of the "teachers". You'll be asked to enter categories of entries, e.g. Midterm, Final, Homework, Quiz. It is important to decide what the categories will be, because they cannot be changed.
  5. You'll be asked for things like how many homework assignments there will be, how many quizzes, etc. We recommend that you enter the very maximum that you could possibly want in each category like quizzes. It's okay if you end up giving fewer quizzes or homework assignments than the maxima you specify here; that won't be a problem.
  6. You'll also be asked for the weighting of each category towards the final grand total score. This can be adjusted later. Similarly, the grade boundaries can be adjusted later.
  7. Restriction: you'll be asked for the maximum score in each category, e.g. 100 for an exam. However, the same maximum is required for each item within a category that has multiple assignments. So all quizzes have to have the same maximum, e.g. 10 or 100 or whatever. In my course, homework assignments have different maxima from assignment to assignment, so I simply scale the scores to a percent and tell the gradebook that the maximum score is 100.
  8. You'll be asked whether you wish to allow students access to their own entries in the gradebook. It is your option; I think it's very helpful. Once the gradebook is configured, teachers and students (if allowed by you) can access the gradebook respectively at these addresses:
    https://gbook.physics.rutgers.edu/gbook/teacher.pl?XXX&semester=YYYYYYYYY https://gbook.physics.rutgers.edu/gbook/student.pl?XXX&semester=YYYYYYYYY
    where again XXX should be replaced by the course number (e.g. 361) and YYYYYYYYY should be replaced by the semester (e.g. spring2009 in lowercase).
  9. Using the gradebook: BE SURE TO USE THE URL FOR THE TEACHER PAGE GIVEN IN THE PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH, not the URL from paragraph 3 for the Administrator page. To enter quiz scores, for example, click the button "Class grades" then on the page that appears, select "Quiz" and click "Enter Class Grades". It is especially convenient to enter scores alphabetically. Enter the first student's score and then press the Tab key. That will send the cursor to the next student, thereby eliminating the need to use the mouse to click each student's quiz box. (If you press Shift+Tab, the cursor will move vertically UP).
  10. Here is how you can check what a student would see if you have allowed student access. From the main Gradebook page select section(s) and click the Sections Summary button. On the page that appears, click on any student's name to see what the student would see.
  11. At the end of the term, here is how you can override the grade that the program gives to a student. Click on Class Roster, then click Update Student Info. For each student there is a column near the far right entitled Status. Click the down arrow and you'll see a drop-down menu of all possible grades. Select the one you want. Click Save Student Info.
    written by Mohan Kalelkar, kalelkarphysics.rutgers.edu
    formatted for the web by
    Joel Shapiro
    (shapirophysics) Last modified: Tue Jun 2 15:51:01 2009