In Class Isaac on 08 Mar 2007 02:40 pm
E-Assignments
Because of a somewhat spotty† one-to-one computing pilot, I have a few kids sprinkled here and there with Tablet PCs (they get issued a Toshiba M400). Mostly, they seem to be gravitating toward OneNote, if they use the tablet for note-taking, though I think some may be using Journal.
Most interesting (at least for this post) is that a number of these students have asked if they can email my their homework when it is something that would otherwise be on a sheet of notebook paper or whatnot. Since I have a tablet and can easily grade right on their file (I’ve been asking for Journal files) and email it back, I’ve said yes and so far it seems to be working reasonably well.
I do think it would be at least a little harder to deal with if I had a full class of students emailing me assignments (or even 4-5 class-fulls of students), but I imagine it would be manageable with some creative email addressing and/or subject line requirements and filters. We also have the option of drop-boxes on the network servers, but that has always seemed like more trouble than it’s worth—it takes time to get set up, it’s not necessarily remotely accessible (for me and/or for students), and files may not be as readily associated with specific students (depending on setup).
† (By spotty, I mean that the group(s) of students who have tablets has no relationship to the groups of students that I have in class, so I get one or two here and there with no visible reason or patter from my perspective. I think it may be by humanities teacher or something.)
3 Responses to “E-Assignments”
on 11 Mar 2007 at 7:06 am
1.Malcolm Harper said …
I have been teaching a class: Computer Applications in Mathematics for a few years now. The class requires students to create Excel spreadsheets and submit them for grading weekly. The previous teacher of the course accepted assignments on floppy disks. I moved to email right away when I took over.
As you note the email option is quite possible with filters and auto responders. The email system I used required constant updating of filters etc as students changed email addresses.
For the past year we have had a Moodle site available at our school. Moodle is a free, open source course management system. Now the students enroll in my Moodle section, I create assignments in Moodle, the students upload their spreadsheets to the site. The site timestamps their submissions. I download the files, scan for viruses, grade and comment them, and upload the graded files to the server. The site sends an email to the students giving them their grade and any general comments and they can go to the site to get their graded Excel files. This has worked tremendously well for me.
Some observations:
1. If such a course management system is not already available it is probably too much trouble to set one up just to accept assignments. I also use the system to distribute course materials to students, for web forums and for course news dissemination.
2. Doing things two different ways is more work than doing things one way. That is accepting and grading assignments on paper and electronically will be more work than doing only one or only the other.
PS. I like the site and will read more when I have time. So far using Ink to grade the Excel based assignments has been better than my old method. (I’ve only had my tablet since January).
on 11 Mar 2007 at 12:45 pm
2.Isaac said …
Interesting you should mention Moodle—one my my colleagues who teaches computer science has been such a strong advocate of Moodle that he convinced our IT department to set up a Moodle server within a few weeks of his being hired. It looks like I’ll have to give Moodle some more thought.
I’d tend to agree with your second observation that grading on paper and electronically simultaneously would be more work that just doing one or the other, though I think that because the specific assignments I’ve been getting by email this semester are so short and have a defined grading rubric, the difference in work is minimal (I don’t have to worry about consistency from paper to electronic and I don’t have to do the paper ones at the same time as the electronic ones).
Also, if you’d be interested in contributing to the site as you learn and discover ways to use your Tablet PC (even just talking about grading in Excel in Ink would be something new and different), please let me know. I’d really appreciate the help.
on 22 Mar 2007 at 10:35 am
3.AJ said …
Malcolm Harper said …
upload the graded files to the server. The site sends an email to the students giving them their grade and any general comments and they can go to the site to get their graded Excel files. This has worked tremendously well for me.
Are you able to download the corrected/graded file student to Moodle. Please explain this process, I do not see this functionlaity in our Moodle 1.6
Thanks