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Fourth Annual Teaching and Learning Mentor Institute (2004)
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Tips on Helpful Tools
J. Wesley Baker, Cedarville University (OH)
Introduction
Session Description
This session comes from more than 15 years of working with computers, the Web and a CMS
for teaching and learning. Somewhat of a grab bag of short topics that can “fall through the
cracks” of normal conference presentations, the session will focus on the electronic
workflow—receiving assignments in digital form from students, managing the files and
providing feedback. Information about helpful, inexpensive programs that facilitate the
process will be provided, as well.
File Naming Conventions for Electronic Homework
When students submit their homework electronically, if you don’t specify
some kind of file naming convention for the files, you will have problems
finding the files when you need them and run the risk of having one
student’s file overwriting another’s with the same file name .
• Tip: When you write the instructions for an assignment, include the protocol for naming the
file. The convention I have used for years is to prefix the name of the file with the initials
of the student, followed by an underline and the name or number of the assignment and the
suffix indicating the file type. Here are a couple of examples from two of my class
schedules:
Save your Student Interest Inventory as xxx_inventory.doc (where xxx = your initials)
and submit to the Assignments Drop Box in WebCT by 9:00 a.m. today.
Tutorial 4:8 – Save finished tutorial by 9:00 a.m. Save it as xxx_tut048.mb (where xxx
= your initials) in your assignments directory on the project drive on the network.
The reason for specifying a time by which the assignment is to be saved is to give me time to
check the directories before class to see if anyone is running behind on the particular
assignment.
The following example is taken from a research class where the assignments come from the
individual students [I], the team [T] or the team’s project manager [PM].
Project Deliverables
Project: Save Problem for the team project [T]; Get XX_02_problem.doc (where
your Activity Log to your Project Manager XX=your team’s number)
Project Manager: Collect first Activity Logs [I]; XX_status01.xls (where
Submit first Project Status Report via XX=your team’s number)
WebCT e-mail [PM]
Tips on Helpful Tools
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In addition to providing a protocol, be sure to specify the type of file it is to be—e.g., plain
text file (*.txt), Word document file (*.doc), Rich Text Format file (*.rtf), Excel file (*.xls),
etc.—and note where it is to be submitted (e-mail attachment, shared network directory, CMS
assignment, CMS shared directory, etc.).
• Tip: Note that I use a leading zero before assignment numbers that are single digit. This
keeps the assignments in numerical order as they are saved, avoiding the problem of the
assignments being saved in this order: 1, 10, 12 ,. . . 2, 20, 21, etc. By using the leading
zero they are saved as: 01, 02, 03, . . . 10, 11, 12, etc.
Using the Comment and Track Changes Features in Word
If you are using Word as the “word processor of choice” for your classes,
then you can use the Add Comment and Track Changes features for
marking up student work.
• Tip: I spend a lot of time marking up student work, but my handwriting is terrible, so
students have trouble deciphering my comments or suggested changes. If their papers are
submitted electronically, then I can type my comments so they are easily legible. Word has
two built-in tools that help with this—Add Comment, which puts a comment in the margin
linked to the point in the text where the comment is being made, and Track Changes, which
highlights changes made to the text itself. Although intended for group work on reports, it
works well for faculty comments to students, as well.
I have a separate handout (file name: Tips Word Markup HO 07 28 2004.doc) available on the
CD that details the process of using these tools.
• Tip: I keep a couple of files in Word that I use when marking up assignments. One is a
set of “boilerplate” comments on grammar and punctuation and another is a set of
“boilerplate” comments on the specific assignment. By being able to “cut and paste”
standard comments into the student paper, I have more time to make some substantial
comments on the individual student’s content. Examples of this are available on the
separate handout dealing with Word mentioned above.
• Tip: When I save the file, I keep the original file name and add “_commented” at the end
of the file name (e.g., jds_inventory_commented.doc). That way the original student file
and my commented version are saved one after the other in the directory, making them
easy to find together. This is true for my directory of homework, the student’s and the
team’s, if we are using a shared team directory in a CMS or on a network drive.
Custom Markup of Student Papers
If you want a tool that provides more extensive support for customizing
your markup of student papers, an inexpensive program—Markin—
provides an alternative to Word.
• Tip: Creative Technology has developed a program that is designed specifically for
marking up student papers. It is called Markin and can be individually licensed for $36.60
(educational licensing for wider campus use is available). The program can be downloaded
Fourth Annual TLM Institute (July 28-30, 2004) 2
Tips on Helpful Tools
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from http://www.cict.co.uk/software/markin/index.htm. It allows you to create your own
button panel of comments to be inserted into a student paper. So, rather than cutting and
pasting from a separate document, as in Word, you just click on a button or use a keyboard
short cut to annotate the paper. You can also add comments and general feedback (two
fields available for feedback). In addition, it provides a report tallying the annotations by
category which you can download and save in order to track student improvement over
time.
My department uses Diana Hacker’s Pocket Style Manual as the standard for grammar,
punctuation and style, for example, so I have created a button panel that inserts annotations
that point students to the relevant sections from Hacker’s Manual.
The annotated paper can be saved in either HTML or RTF format. The major limitation
with the program is that it cannot read or save Word .doc files, which is a problem if you
are using any special formatting, such as footnotes, in student papers.
A sample student paper and commented marked up reports in Markin, HTML and RTF
formats are available on the CD for this session.
Tracking Student Improvement in Writing
Trying to keep track of student improvement in writing over time is difficult.
If you use the Markin tool described in the previous section, it helps you
accomplish this by being able to download student statistics.
• Tip: The Statistics menu option in Markin brings up an Annotation Statistics window
summarizing the annotations to the paper by category. You can then use the Export
Statistics menu option in the window to save the information in a text file. The text file can
then be imported into Excel (with Tab as the field delimiter), allowing you to build a record
of the student’s work assignment by assignment. Add a column that provides some kind of
chronological note so you can sort the student’s work over time and get a sense of how the
student’s work is improving from one assignment to the next. There are a text file and an
Excel file in the Markin directory on the CD for this session that provide examples.
Transporting and/or backing up current files
Since I’m always working on files at home and at the office, I need some
reliable way to transport the files back and forth. I used Zip disks for
several years, but had occasional failures resulting in the “click of death”
and now our office machines no longer have Zip drives in them. I moved to
recordable CDs, but the constant reading and writing caused regular
failures of the media on a monthly basis. Since moving to a flash drive, I
now have a reliable medium that has yet to fail on me.
• Tip: Transport file using one of the “key chain” USB flash drives. They are reliable, easy
to use and extremely portable, making it easy to carry files from office to home and back.
Their storage capacities range from 64 KB up to around 2 GB currently. Prices continue to
drop, though the larger capacity drives are still a bit pricey—OfficeMax has the Kingston
256K drive listed at $69.98; Staples has the Imation 256K drive listed at $89.94.
Fourth Annual TLM Institute (July 28-30, 2004) 3
Tips on Helpful Tools
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The Computer Services department at Cedarville just issued extra drives to our techs with
instructions to give them out to faculty who they discover are not backing up their files
regularly.
Providing Network Space for Faculty Backups
Faculty are notorious for not backing up files—even when they are crucial
files that result in disaster if they are lost, erased or corrupted. Providing
network space where faculty can store backups of crucial files (and which is
backed up regularly) can help deal with this problem.
• Tip: Provide space on a network drive where faculty can store backups. You probably can’t
provide enough space for all of their files, but making it available for crucial files is at least
a start. At Cedarville we have provided a Faculty Backup directory on a network drive in
addition to their regular network file space. We encourage them to regularly backup files to
that space—especially their grade files and archived CMS courses (in Zipped files). A
reminder about this space goes out at least once a term, when we remind faculty to backup
up their CMS courses for the term before creating new courses for the coming term.
Understanding File Structures
Many faculty don’t understand the concept of directories and sub-
directories, making it hard to talk to them about backing up files. They just
click on the Save option for the program, without having any sense of where
the files are being saved. Since they don’t know where the files are, they
can’t find them to back them up.
• Tip: As part of your faculty development sessions, include information on file structures. It
may seem elementary to you, but to a faculty member who doesn’t understand file
structures it is a mystery. In the “Graphic Design for Faculty Course” directory on the CD
for this session, there is a “Directory Examples” directory containing some files that
illustrate levels of directories. In the Principles of Web Graphics presentation on the CD,
there are some slides that are coordinated with the “Directory Examples” folder, beginning
with slide 38. These may help you with ideas of how to present the concept of file
structures to your faculty.
Keeping all your files in sync
I work on all of my class files at home and at the office. For years I have
struggled with how to keep the files in both places current. Finally, a
student pointed me to a great shareware program called FileSync that does
everything I was looking for. Since using it, I had eliminated the problem of
having the file I needed at home when I was working in the office and vice
versa .
• Tip: I have searched for years for a good program that would keep my files at home and at
the office in sync. I tried several without finding the features I wanted and then a student
pointed me to FileSync. It has been a perfect solution for me and has eliminated the
Fourth Annual TLM Institute (July 28-30, 2004) 4
Tips on Helpful Tools
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problems I had in keeping my files constantly updated. The program is available from
FileWare—a shareware program that you can register for $15.00—available from
http://www.fileware.com/products.htm#Filesync. The current version is 2.18, which dates
from 2000. Although the home page for the site has been promising an update of the
program for some time, nothing has changed recently. However, the program works well,
as is, so the lack of a recent update doesn’t seem to be a problem for now.
The program has loads of features in helping you keep files in sync. One that you shouldn’t
miss is a bit hidden away in the Options. In the Options window, click on the File System
tab and click on the “Ignore 2 second time differences” under the “For NTFS to FAT file
systems.” This will avoid a problem you can run into on Windows machines because of
differences in file systems on different drives.
Here is the routine I follow with my current class files:
• First thing when I get to the office is to plug in my USB Flash drive and run
FileSync for directories I am currently using on the Flash drive and their
corresponding directories on the C or network drive.
• Last thing at the end of the day at the office is to run FileSync again to update the
files on the USB Flash drive from the C or network drives I have been using
through the day.
• First thing I do when I start working at home in the evening is to run FileSync in
order to update the files on the C drive of my home computer.
• Last thing at the end of the night at home is to run FileSync again to update the
files on the USB Flash drive from the C drive of my home computer.
By following this routine, I am able to always have the same files at home and at the
office—plus I have a backup of files I am currently using on my USB Flash drive.
This same procedure can be used for a faculty member who needs to regularly backup files
on a network drive, as described above.
Fourth Annual TLM Institute (July 28-30, 2004) 5
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