Marks sheets and marks recording using "markssheet" and "inmarks"

To get a list of the students who are in your tutorial, according to the University Timetabling Service (we rely on them for our official class lists), you use the "markssheet" command on any one of the Department's undergraduate Unix machines. You need to have tutor privileges (which all tutors should receive, without needing to ask for them) in order to do this. You can type

   markssheet

to see the list of known units of study. Then you can type, for example,

   markssheet 1002j

to see the list of tutorial groups for the July offering of COMP1002. Then you can type, for example,

   markssheet 1002j u6

to get a marks sheet for tutorial group u6 of comp1002j. This produces a PostScript file as output, so actually you need to type

   markssheet 1002j u6 > myclass.ps

to save the output into a file that you can subsequently print with lpr or view on screen with ghostview.

Note that INFO1000 is somewhat special because there are separate groups of students for tutes and labs; so for that course markssheet should show two units, 1000jtute and 1000jlab or something similar.

It's our policy that a student can attend your tutorial only if they either appear on your marks sheet or else they can show you an official printed timetable with your tutorial on it. (This is to take account of students who have changed their timetable too recently for the change to have filtered through to markssheet.) If your class is overfull it's only fair to the other students to enforce this rule.

In many of the Department's units your lecturer will require you to record all the marks you produce using the "inmarks" program. This is partly so that the marks are produced in a uniform format, and partly to help reduce the chance of errors. Before using inmarks you need to check whether you lecturer does want marks recorded this way.

To run inmarks, open an X terminal window on one of the Department's undergraduate machines. Type "inmarks" followed by the unit name and the tute group name, as for markssheet. For example, if you are teaching COMP1002 and your tute group name is X7 you would type

    inmarks 1002 x7

You need to do this in a reasonably high and wide window. You can find the list of known units by typing

    inmarks

and you can find the list of known tute groups for a unit by typing

    inmarks 1002j

for COMP1002, or whatever other unit you want.

If you are denied permission to use inmarks, don't make the mistake of trying to enter your marks some other way. Instead, mail dp and explain that you are a tutor and need to use inmarks and markssheet, and wait until they fix the problem before entering your marks. In principle you should have permission from day one, but sometimes it's late getting set up or some people get missed.

When inmarks runs it takes over the window, and you should see the heading "Basser Marks Entry System" and some other stuff. It is now waiting for you to tell it what your marks are out of: 10 or 20 or whatever. You should enter this number and hit return. If you have several marks to enter for each student, you can type several maximum marks separated by spaces, and inmarks will prepare itself to receive several marks per student.

After you've entered the maximum marks, you are asked for an output file name. The marks you enter using "inmarks" do not go to a central database, they just go into a file whose name you give now. A suitable name for the example above might be

    x7.a1.jeff

or your section leader might ask you to use a certain name.

After you enter the file name and return, you'll see a list of students, hopefully more or less the same as the students in your tute group. The names come ultimately from the university timetabling system, although not instantaneously (they get updated from time to time). The current student is marked with asterisks, like this:

    *Acharya, Anamika    *aacharya*

and the cursor is positioned beside the current student, ready for you to type this student's mark or marks. Type in this student's mark and hit return to go to the next student; or just hit return (or type -) if the mark is missing (we distinguish between a mark of 0, which means they tried it but achieved nothing, and -, which means that there was no attempt). When typing multiple marks, inmarks often types the spaces between marks for you, and it will beep if you type the wrong number of marks or an out-of-range mark. Use backspace to correct mistakes while you are on the line.

There is a / command which is vital to the effective use of inmarks. This is the search command: you type / followed by a login name or SID followed by return and the program jumps to the student with that name or SID. This is the only way to go backwards through the list of names, but more importantly:

   ***********************************************************
   *                                                         *
   *   the / command will find any student enrolled in the   *
   *   unit, not just the students you see in your window    *
   *                                                         *
   ***********************************************************

This is the answer to what to do about students who are in your class but inmarks does not know that: search for them, and if they are enrolled at all they will appear among the other students in your window.

If the / command cannot find the student it means that inmarks believes they are not enrolled in the unit. This could be a serious problem for the student if it is true, so you should ask the student whether they are sure they are enrolled. Especially after the HECS cutoff our files are supposed to represent the true enrolment situation, although perhaps not immediately. My suggestion for what to do until the enrolment problem is fixed is to ask the student for their SID and hand-edit the output file (x7.a1.jeff or whatever) to add their mark. The format is the first three letters of the student's surname (two-character surnames get a comma appended to the surname) followed by the seven-digit SID followed by the marks, right-justified in columns four characters wide. If you hand-edit a marks file you must get the columns right; incorrectly hand-edited marks files are a major source of errors in marks processing.

To quit, type q instead of a mark. There are two files created: x7.a1.jeff and x7.a1.jeff.log; send the first to your lecturer or section leader and waste some time wondering whether there is any use for the second file. Because inmarks does not put any headings on its columns of marks you must name the file in a way that identifies which particular marks are in it, and in what order if there are several columns.

Jeff Kingston