eyegrade

This post describes another feature that will be available in eyegrade 0.5 (see the first installment of this series of posts). I've largely reworked the code that handles the student lists. In eyegrade 0.5 you'll see two visible changes regarding ... [More] this. Firstly, you'll be able to specify the first and last name of students in two separate fields. Secondly, there is a new dialog for entering, while grading an exam, new students. Separating first and last name will be optional. Eyegrade will infer, from the student lists it imports, whether you are providing separate first and last name fields, or the whole name together in just one field. When exporting grades, you'll have control over which name fields get exported and will be able to sort the listing by last name if you wish so. Regarding the second change, there will be a new button in the dialog for editing the student id that lets you open a dialog for entering the data for a student that is not in your student lists: The dialog asks for the numerical id, first name, last name and email. Only the numerical id is mandatory. This is the current look of the dialog, although it might change before the release: [Less]

Apart from fixing some minor issues here and there, I'm currently busy adding some new features to eyegrade. Some of them are already integrated into the development branch at GitHub. The plan is releasing them with eyegrade 0.5 sometime in January. ... [More] I'm not sure yet which new features will make it into the release but, starting with this post, I'll describe some of them once they are more or less ready. The first feature I'll talk about is actually a fix for a counter-intuitive behavior of the right-side view of exams (the one I introduced in eyegrade 0.3 that shows miniatures of the exams that have been graded in the current session). Up to now, the miniature was not immediately updated when the webcam captured a new exam or you edited something on a previously graded exam. It was updated later, when you changed to another exam or started to grade a new one. That was somewhat confusing for many users. From version 0.5 onward the miniatures will get updated immediately when the webcam captures a new exam or you edit an exam. I believe that having that immediate feedback will improve the overall user experience. More posts will follow with the description of other new features. [Less]

I've just released Eyegrade 0.4.4. This version fixes a bug introduced by the bugfix of version 0.4.3. Version 0.4.3 solved the problem for the older versions of Python, but inadvertently introduced exactly the same problem for the newer versions ... [More] , which were previously unaffected. I've reverted the erroneous fix and solved the problem in a better way. This new version should be able to export grades in any 2.6 and 2.7 version of Python, both Windows and Linux. This is the only change with respect to version 0.4.3. As always, if you have installed Eyegrade through git, you can easily update the program by executing the command git pull from inside the directory in which Eyegrade is installed. [Less]

I've just released Eyegrade 0.4.3. This release fixes a bug that made the functionality that exports grades fail when the program is run with the Python 2.6 version I distribute for Windows. Linux users with a reasonably recent version of Python were ... [More] not affected. This is the only change with respect to version 0.4.2. If you have installed Eyegrade through git, you can easily update the program by executing the command git pull from inside the directory in which Eyegrade is installed. [Less]

The official way of editting your exams for Eyegrade consists of creating an XML file with the questions, running on it the create_exam script provided by Eyegrade and compiling the resulting files with LaTeX in order to get the final PDF documents. ... [More] Although exams can also be edited with a word processor such as OpenOffice or Microsoft Word (see Creating the exams in a word processor), following the official way has some advantages: Eyegrade shuffles the questions and produces several models with different question orderings. Eyegrade creates the exam configuration file (the .eye file) automatically. LaTeX-style equations may be used inside the questions. However, editing an XML file and dealing with LaTeX may scare some users that are more used to graphical word processors. In order to make the procedure more approachable, the user manual describes now more in depth how to edit exams the official way in the section Editing exams. Suggestions on how to improve that section further are most welcome. [Less]

I've released eyegrade 0.4 (actually, eyegrade 0.4.2 after a couple of minor changes and a bug fix). There is only one main change in this release with respect to the 0.3 series, the ability to export grade listings from the user interface. When you ... [More] select in the menu Exams / Export grade listing you get a dialog like the following one that allows you to configure the export options: This new feature is easier to use and more flexible than the mix_grades script that was available in the previous versions. The script is now obsolete and will probably be removed in the future. [Less]

I've release eyegrade 0.4 (actually, eyegrade 0.4.2 after a couple of minor changes and a bug fix). There is only one main change in this release with respect to the 0.3 series, the ability to export grade listings from the user interface. When you ... [More] select in the menu Exams / Export grade listing you get a dialog like the following one that allows you to configure the export options: This new feature is easier to use and more flexible than the mix_grades script that was available in the previous versions. The script is now obsolete and will probably be removed in the future. [Less]

I've just released eyegrade 0.3. The main changes in this version are: Previously, exams could only be reviewed immediately after capturing them. Now you can review the exams, change answers or change the student id any time you open the session. A ... [More] consequence of the previous change is that now grading does not start automatically when the session is opened. Once you open a session, you can view or edit the exams you have already graded, or click on the Start grading action in the menu / toolbar in order to start grading more exams. The graphical user interface is now prepared for translations. This release features an interface in English, Spanish, Galician and Catalan. Volunteers for other languages are welcome. There are changes to the layout of the graphical user interface. There is a vertical area at the left were the thumbnails of the exams graded for this session are displayed. In addition, there is a new status bar at the bottom. Other fixes. Be aware that the sessions created with eyegrade 0.3 are not compatible with previous versions. Conversely, sessions created with previous versions cannot be opened with eyegrade 0.3. The reason is that now session are stored internally as a SQLite database and store more information about the exams than the previous versions. If you have installed eyegrade through git, you can easily update the program from versions in the series 0.2.x by executing the command git pull from inside the directory in which eyegrade is installed. If you find bugs or problems with this new release, please open an issue at the GitHub project page, or just let me know by commenting on this post or sending me an email. [Less]

I've just released eyegrade 0.3. The main changes in this version are: Previously, exams could only be reviewed immediately after capturing them. Now you can review the exams, change answers or change the student id any time you open the session. A ... [More] consequence of the previous change is that now grading does not start automatically when the session is opened. Once you open a session, you can view or edit the exams you have already graded, or click on the Start grading action in the menu / toolbar in order to start grading more exams. The graphical user interface is now prepared for translations. This release features an interface in English, Spanish, Galician and Catalan. Volunteers for other languages are welcome. There are changes to the layout of the graphical user interface. There is a vertical area at the left were the thumbnails of the exams graded for this session are displayed. In addition, there is a new status bar at the bottom. Other fixes. Be aware that the sessions created with eyegrade 0.3 are not compatible with previous versions. Conversely, sessions created with previous versions cannot be opened with eyegrade 0.3. The reason is that now session are stored internally as a SQLite database and store more information about the exams than the previous versions. If you have installed eyegrade through git, you can easily update the program from versions in the series 0.2.x by executing the command git pull from inside the directory in which eyegrade is installed. If you find bugs or problems with this new release, please open an issue at the GitHub project page, or just let me know by commenting on this post or sending me an email. [Less]

I've just moved Eyegrade to a new Web location at eyegrade.org. These are the important links: Project homepage: http://eyegrade.org/ User manual: http://eyegrade.org/doc/user-manual/ Blog: http://eyegrade.org/blog/ RSS feed: ... [More] http://eyegrade.org/blog/rss.xml Requests for the old addresses will automatically be redirected to the new location. However, the old server may be down for some periods of August. In fact, the frequent downtimes of the old hosting are one of the main reasons for the change. During those downtime periods redirections won't work. However, the new addresses will work properly even in that case. The new website is hosted at the GitHub Pages service. My experience so far with this service has been very satisfactory. The availability of the website with the new hosting will definitely be much better. [Less]