1.1. Problem Statement

The general problems to be addressed by the Grader Tool project are the following:

  1. To provide a reliable and easy to use software tool that manages grading of classes

  2. To provide a secure environment that instructors and teacher assistants can upload grades

  3. To give students the ability to view course grades without compromising their privacy.
While these problems have been solved by a number of commercially available and public domain products, the Grader Tool provides a solution with certain functional improvements over existing tools. Specific problem areas are the following:

  1. Multi user access to data

  2. Providing a wide range of tools in a single software

  3. Providing an integrated form of electronic handin of student work

  4. Providing a desktop application which is capable of uploading the spreadsheets. Those spreadsheets will be used to inform the individual students about their grades in the class.

  5. Providing a more responsive performance than the purely browser-based PolyLearn system

The Grader Tool project addresses the requirements of students and instructors. This project provides a combination of tools that are not provided in any single commercial tool.

Furthermore, Grader Tool project focuses on three additional features not provided by commercial tools:

  1. To provide tools for curving the grades

  2. To provide visual representations that can be used to adjust the grades of the class

  3. To provide students with information about what grade they need to get in the future in order to get their desired letter grade in that class




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