1.1. Problem Statement
The general problems to be addressed by the Grader project are the following:
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To provide a detailed and easy to use software tool that manages, organizes, displays and analyzes grades for both professors and students.
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To allow professors to efficiently maintain and update grades in a secure and stable environment
While there is other grader software commercially available that provides for professors to electronically update and calculate grades, the Grader project is designed to create a more powerful software that can allow greater customizability and analysis that is not currently provided by other programs. Specific problem areas are the following:
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Automatic roster creation by file upload
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Hierarchical organization of students by class, teams, sub-teams, etc.
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Hierarchical organization of graded assignments by type and weight
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In depth analysis of grades available to both students and professors, including class standings, averages, pie charts and histograms along with detailed information
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Ability to submit grades directly to the registrar's office with a simple click
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A centralized host repository that professors can post grades to and students can view.
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A reliable archive of past quarters and even data analysis of previous sections available to professors to further assist them in planning and analyzing their classes
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A graphical and dynamic method to manipulate grade curves
The Grader project addresses the requirements of a particular customer. This customer needs a tool with a collection of features not available in any single existing tool. This aspect of the problem requires combining a set of existing features in a way that the features have yet to be combined in another product. We plan on incorporating parts of existing grader projects while also using tools from existing spreadsheet and analysis software to provide a single powerful tool for the client.
In addition to the development of functioning software the Grader project
focuses on two additional problems not addressed in commercial tools:
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to provide a pedagogical example for use in the instruction of software
engineering, including an example of the practical application of formal
methods
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to provide fully documented, public domain source code for use by others
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