hongboavelu / omsi Goto Github PK

OMSI, short for Online Measurement of Student Insight, is a Python project for conducting and grading examinations in a manner that is both secure and conducive to high-quality measurement of student insight. It is suitable for small or large class exams, be they based on essays, writing code, math analysis or multiple choice question.

Students come to the classroom at the regular class time, just as with a traditional pencil-and-paper exam. However, they use their laptops to take the exam, using OMSI. The latter downloads the exam questions, and enables the students to upload their answers.

OMSI has two components:

• Exam administration. This manages the actual process of the students taking the exam.
• Exam grading. OMSI does NOT take the place of instructor judgment in assigning points to individual exam problems, and total grade for the exam. But it does make things much easier, by automating much of the drudgery. For instance, OMSI automatically records grades assigned by the instructor, and automatically notifies students of their grades via e-mail.

In addition to making the job of grading much easier, OMSI has a number of advantages for students over the traditional pencil-and-paper format:

• With essay questions, students have a chance to edit their answers, producing more coherent, readable prose.
• With coding questions, students can compile and run their code, giving them a chance to make corrections if their code doesn't work.

In both of these aspects, OMSI gives the student a better chance to demonstrate his/her insight into the course material, compared to the traditional exam format.

How to use this project package:

Installing the package (instructor and students)

Getting up and running is simple. Just download the .zip file. Unzipping it will produce a directory omsi-master, where all relevant files residen.

Preparing the exam questions (instructor)

Within the directory omsi-master, there will be a directory ProfessorHomeDirectory. You place your exam questions in that directory (sample files are included there). The format for specifying the questions is detailed below.

Starting the server (instructor)

At the start of the exam period (not before), start the server from a shell/command line window by issuing the command

python OmsiServer.py [portNumber] [quoted exam name]

from within the omsi-master directory, e.g.

python OmsiServer.py 5000 'Fall 2014 Midterm 1'

The port number must be above 1024.

The address needed for students to connect to the server will then be printed to the terminal in the format host:port e.g. pc16.cs.ucdavis.edu:5000. This info will need to be distributed to the students at the start of the exam.

Connecting to the server (students)

All students must download the package as well. Once they have the files all they need to do is run OmsiGui.py. They can connect to the server and get the exam questions by clicking File->Connect and providing their student email address and the host and port provided by the instructor.

NOTE: There should be two separate on the right of the GUI, one for the question and one to write the answer. The boxes are resizable and the question box may default to occupying the entire right side of the screen on some systems. If this is the case grab the bottom of the box to resize.

Submitting answers (students)

Students can submit the answer to a particular question by navigating to the question and clicking File->Submit. They can also submit all answers with File->Submit All. A dialog box specifying whether submission was successful will then be displayed.

On the server side, a directory will be created for each student, using the email address provided by the student, under ProfessorHomeDirectory. In the directory there will be an answer file for each question. e.g. omsi_answer1.txt or omsi_answer2.java

What happens after the exam? How to autograding work?

The autograding program is semi-autograded. It goes through the students' file answers.txt in their individual directory with the name of their emailname (e.g. [email protected] -> jsmith) to parse students' answer and a master answer file with the name Answerx, where x is the test ID. It then displays both sets of answers to the professor. If there are any formatting errors, the program will alert the professor. The professor needs to manually fix the files and decides how many points to award and applies any late penalties if deemed necessary. All results are then stored in an output file.

The exam questions should be placed in a file called Questions.txt in the ProfessorsHomeDirectory. The file should contain a description and any questions for the exam. If there are notes the instructor would like to write to himself in the file they should be placed at the beginning. When parsing the file the parser will go through line by line and search for keywords DESCRIPTION or QUESTION. Once a keyword is found each line after it is appended together until it reaches another keyword or the end of the file. So content that is not intended to be a part of a question or description should not be below a keyword. Questions are numbered in the order they are discovered.

Specifying different file types

By default all answers are saved as a .txt file. If a different filetype is desired then the -ext flag may be specified when adding the QUESTION keyword. i.e 'QUESTION -ext .py'

Specifying compile and run options

The compile and run functionalities are by default disabled. If any question requires compile and run then the -com and -run flags may be specified in a simillar manner as the -ext file while adding the QUESTION keyword, e.g. 'QUESTION -com gcc -flags "-Wall -g" -run .\a.out', 'QUESTION -com python -run "python omsi_answer1.py" '

Summary of each file on this site (in alphabetical order)

AutoGrade.py A program to grade the students' answer electronically and automatically (translated from Prof. N. Matloff's AutoGrade.R, included in this site).

Checksum.py A program to convert content of students' answer to hexadecimal for grading.

Client.py Main function Client side. This function connect to the server, it allows students to cache username and email for easy submission of files to the server.

ClientGlobals.py Global variables client side.

ClientRoutines.py A set of routines relevant to the client. The routines include file transfer from Client to Server, file transfer from Server to Client, a "log in"/authentication system requiring students to input their email addresses for authentication.

ExampleScriptClientSide.py A sample script on how to use Client interface.

ExampleScriptServerSide.py A sample script on how grading scripts can be run on Server.

NetworkMonitor.py A program to store network traffic of students' machines while students are taking the examination.

ProcessMonitor.py A program to store the start time of the examination and process attributes e.g. name, record number, process id.

Server.py Main function server side. This routine runs during the entire duration of the exam. This routine allows for students to connect to the server and it delegates requests on the Server.

ServerGlobals.py Global variables server side.

ServerRoutines.py Routines that can be called via Server.py. Routines include file transfer from Server to Client, file transfer from Client to Server, file storage Server side as well as routines for setting up the Server and terminating it.