Gradebook2
Scope
This page lays out some basic information about the Sakai Gradebook2 tool, including #instructions for installation,
the original #motivation, some #specifics of the new tool, links to additional #resources, and a high-level #roadmap of development.
Communication
Aug 02, 2013 : we have released gradebook2 v1.9.0
Nov 15, 2012 : we have released gradebook2 v1.8.1
Jun 22, 2012 : we have released gradebook2 v1.8.0
Apr 11, 2012 : we have released gradebook2 v1.7.1
Dec 15, 2011 : we have released gradebook2 v1.7.0
Aug 29, 2011 : we have released gradebook2 v1.6.1
Aug 12, 2011 : we have released gradebook2 v1.6.0
Jun 20, 2011 : we have released gradebook2 v1.5.0
Apr 26, 2011 : Gradebook2 will require Java 6 after version 1.5.0 has been released
Mar 04, 2011 : we highly recommend that everybody who is running and older version than 1.4.1 to upgrade to this latest version
Mar 04, 2011 : we have released gradebook2 v1.4.1
Feb 18, 2011 : we have released gradebook2 v1.4.0
Dec 22, 2010 : If anybody is using v1.3.0, we strongly recommend to upgrade to v1.4.0. GRBK-721, which is fixed since v1.3.1, can cause incorrect course grade lookups.
Oct 15, 2010 : we have released gradebook2 v1.3.1
Sep 15, 2010 : Institutions Using Gradebook2
Apr 27, 2010 : we have a dedicated gradebook2 developers mailing list:
Links to Additional Resources
Mailing list: http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/gradebook2-dev
JIRA Space: https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/GRBK
Subversion: https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/gradebook2
Some documentation on grade calculations can be found on the UCDavis Confluence site.
Help Documentation
If you use UC Davis' gradebook2 help documentation in its original and or modified form, please add the following reference:
"Based on original documentation provided at UCDavis. UCDavis takes no responsibility as to the accuracy or currency of the content within."
UC Davis Gradebook2 Help Documentation
(Note: this help documentation is out of date as of November 1, 2011 and is no longer being maintained.)
rSmart's Gradebook2 Help Documentation will be available soon
Description
A new Gradebook User Interface ("Gradebook2")
UC Davis has been successfully running the new gradebook user interface in production since June 2009. This user interface was built using the Google Web Toolkit and GXT Ext GWT SDK. This new tool leverages the existing Gradebook1 data model objects, with some slight modifications (the addition of several new properties to certain java classes and database tables).
There are many other institutions who have contributed work to the project and who are now evaluating Gradebook2 for use in their Sakai installations, including Georgia Tech, Rutgers, Texas State University, and University of Michigan.
The philosophy of this new interface is to provide a spreadsheet-like experience for graders, with a listing of all learners in a site and all of their grades by grade item. This will make it easy for instructors to grade multiple students for multiple items, just as they often do by using one of the existing off-the-shelf Spreadsheet tools (e.g. Microsoft Excel). Course grades are calculated on the fly based on weightings at the grade item and category level.
Instructions for Installation
The latest release builds against Sakai trunk OOTB, but includes patches for use against the 2.5.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x, 2.8.x, and 2.9.x versions.
Version-specific instructions and patches can be found under the gradebook2/sakai directory in the trunk source code.
There are several steps required to get Gradebook2 running against Sakai 2.5.x and 2.6.x because the data model that is shared with the older Gradebook requires some modifications to handle the additional functionality of the new tool. This means:
Running a patch against the old gradebook module
Running a patch against the gradebook2 module itself (to account for maven dependency changes between Sakai versions)
Running a patch against the sam module
Running a sql script against the database, or turning on auto.ddl to bring the Sakai database up to date
The sql scripts are also available under the gradebook2/sakai directory in the sql subdirectory. They are provided for Oracle and now also MySQL (thanks to Amy Boyd at Texas State).
Source Code README and InstitutionalAdvisor
Additionally, institutions may choose to implement the InstitutionalAdvisor bean to customize final grade submission behavior. This bean can be injected via Spring as a Sakai component and will be found and injected by the Gradebook2 service.
Technical Details on Gradebook2 Releases
As of 1.7.0, Gardebook2 uses GWT 2.4.0 and GXT 2.2.5
As of 1.5.0, Gradebook2 uses GWT 2.3.0 and GXT 2.2.4
Prior to 1.2.0, Gradebook2 uses GWT 1.5.3 and GXT 1.2.4
As of 1.2.0, Gradebook2 uses GWT 2.0.3 and GXT 2.1.1
As of 1.3.0, Gradebook2 uses GWT 2.0.4 and GXT 2.1.1
Motivation
Various institutions (UC Davis, Indiana, and Georgia Tech, among others) made a decision to take another look at the Sakai Gradebook in order to reevaluate some of the assumptions that went into building the current user interface and services.
Requirements that came up included the following:
To redesign around user goals
For teachers, to give them more intuitive ways to add data and calculate from it, but also to annotate in more freeform ways for their own purposes. Current pain points include:
Complexity of setting up a new grade book, and
Complexity of assigning evaluations for multiple students at once
For learners, to get clearer and better information about their performance
To reduce American-centric assumptions (which tend to be rigorously numerical, and involve large classes with only the simplest assessment workflows)
To make it easier to handle large numbers of markable/gradeable items
To make it easier to handle large numbers of students
To make it possible to grade or 'mark' any Sakai entity without duplicating the score data
That is, to make the Gradebook an appealing repository for mark/grade/score/evaluation data inside Sakai
To build in an audit trail that other services/tools can take advantage of
To expand what it means to grade or score something in Sakai
To make the structure of markable entities more rigorously hierarchical
This is based on a view of the current gradebook structure as a tree with the gradebook itself as the root, with 'final course grade' branches for each student. These branches then have sub-branches for each weighted category, and the leaves are the assignment grades themselves. Making this relationship explicit would eliminate the need for a 'Category' object.
To allow more flexible roll-up rule sets to work on those hierarchies
To make it possible for institutions or even faculty to easily plug in alternative methods of score calculation or define custom rubrics
To allow for arbitrary forms of feedback to also be stored as evaluation data (e.g. Post 'Em use cases)
These might include comments or non-numeric/non-letter grade marks
To allow for ranked or multiple graders on a single entity
That is, so two or more instructors' evaluations could be averaged or summed (or using some other formula) to arrive at a final score, or
So an 'instructor' mark could override a 'teaching assistant' mark, for example.
To provide histograms or other reporting for both teachers and learners
Comments
Is Gradebook2 available on any of the QA servers?
UC Davis is QAing GB2 locally. I just sent a mail to Alen Berg asking about your question. I have CCed you on that email.
– Thomas
Many thanks. Saw the email.
Hi guys,
Are there plans to make statistics available to the instructor in a visual format, and to allow the instructor to share these statistics with the students?