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1990-01-28
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VAR Grade is COPYRIGHTED (C) 1990 by Dennis Revie.
All rights are reserved.
VAR Grade can be distributed as SHAREWARE. It is not free.
Baby Driver is licensed from Ithaca Street Software, Inc.
COPYRIGHT (C) 1989. The program INSTALLP.EXE is copyrighted
Ithaca Street Software, Inc., and is included in accordance
with the license. Comments and instructions from the Baby
Driver manual have been used in this manual.
VAR Grade is written in Borland International's Turbo
Pascal. The files that can be listed by the "DIR *.BGI"
(screen drivers) and "DIR *.CHR" (fonts) are copyrighted by
Borland International and are used in accordance with the
license.
VAR Grade is dedicated to VAR, without whom neither the
program nor the program author would exist.
Diana E. Axelsen has been invaluable in preparing this
Manual: her assistance is gratefully acknowledged.
NOTICE
This program can be used in a preview basis only unless it
has been registered. You may use it on an interim basis to
decide if you want the program. Should you decide not to
register it, you MUST erase the program. If you use the
program, you MUST register it.
The program can be updated and improved only if you support
the program. If you find the program useful, please express your
appreciation by registering your copy. Registration of VAR Grade
will not only salve your conscience but will also provide you
with benefits.
The registration information below is for a single-site
licence. This allows you to make as many copies of the program
as you desire, as long as only one copy is in use at any time.
Multiple-site licenses are also available on either a per copy or
per school basis.
To register, send $30 to the address listed below. For an
additional $10, you also get a 78 page laser-printed manual. The
Manual includes tutorials, detailed descriptions of ways to use
the program, figures showing some of the ways the program can be
used to analyze grades, an index, and suggestions for both
beginning computer users and for experts. A shorter disk version
of the manual (without figures and index) is included with the
program. Registration includes:
(a) The current version of the program on four 360K disks
(other disk formats are available) will be sent. This
includes one disk more than the shareware version. The
additional disk includes two utilities: one to alter the
graphics printer drivers and the other allows you to load
students from batch files. It also includes several
additional fonts. There is also an enhanced manual.
(b) If you find any significant bugs, they will be corrected
and a corrected version of VAR Grade sent to you as soon as
possible.
(c) The next update of the program will be sent free of charge
(the updated manual will be offered at low cost). If you
have purchased the Manual within 90 days of a new update,
the new Manual also will be included free of charge.
(d) Further updates will be offered at nominal cost
(approximately 25% of the price of the current registered
version).
i
When you register please include your name, address, and the
version of the program that you wish to register. A suggested
form is included on Disk #3 in the file REGISTER.TXT.
The following information is useful to us, and essential for
bug reports:
(1) The type of computer AND microprocessor 8088, 80286,
...).
(2) The type of printer you will use with it.
(3) The version of DOS that you are using (important for
finding bugs).
(4) Where you found or heard about VAR GRADE.
(5) Any suggestions for improving the program--wish lists,
etc. for the program.
(6) List any bugs that you have found--and EXACTLY, if
possible, how they occurred. This information is needed
to find and correct the bug.
For Registration or Information:
Dennis Revie
Attn: VAR Grade
4804 Highland Ave
Oxnard, CA 93033-7818
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
NOTICE..........................................................i
TABLE OF CONTENTS.............................................iii
I. INTRODUCTION TO VAR GRADE....................................1
A. Program Features.........................................2
B. Conventions Used in this Manual..........................6
C. GSample..................................................7
II. REQUIREMENTS................................................8
A. Versions.................................................8
B. Files on the Disks.......................................8
C. Required Files...........................................9
D. Where Should the Files Be?...............................9
III. INSTALLATION OF VAR GRADE.................................10
A. Using INSTALL...........................................10
B. Installation without INSTALL............................12
IV. FIRST USE OF VAR GRADE.....................................13
A. Printing the Manual.....................................13
B. Starting the Program....................................13
C. Using an Existing Class: Tutorial.......................13
D. Starting a New Class....................................16
E. Entering Data...........................................18
F. If You Are Lost.........................................19
G. Exiting the program.....................................19
H. How Special Keys are Used...............................20
I. How the cursor keys work................................20
V. STARTING THE PROGRAM........................................22
A. Where Should the Program Files Be?......................22
B. Picking a Class.........................................25
C. Converting Old Classes Into New Classes.................26
D. Classes Too Big for the Memory..........................26
E. Setting Up the Class....................................27
F. Entering Students, Tasks, Attendance, and Grades........29
G. Reading the Manual and Help screens.....................30
iii
VI. ENTERING STUDENTS..........................................32
A. General Methods.........................................32
B. Names and IDs...........................................32
C. Typing in Names and IDs.................................32
D. Importing Students from Files...........................34
E. Sorting Students........................................36
VII. DEFINING TASKS............................................37
A. Regular Tasks...........................................37
B. Special Tasks...........................................38
C. Scaling Tasks...........................................41
D. Memory Limitations......................................41
E. Manipulating Tasks......................................42
F. Examples of Task Definitions............................43
VIII. ENTERING GRADES..........................................45
A. Entering Data for the Whole Class.......................45
B. Entering Individual Student Data........................47
C. Saving Entered Data to Disk.............................48
IX. ATTENDANCE.................................................49
A. Defining Attendance Days................................49
B. Changing Defaults.......................................49
C. Entering Class Attendance...............................50
D. Entering Individual Student Attendance..................50
X. ANALYZING THE GRADES........................................52
A. Default Values for Analysis.............................52
B. Plotting the Scores of a Class..........................53
C. Plotting the Scores of an Individual....................54
D. Calculating Statistics..................................55
E. Correlating Different Tasks.............................56
F. Statistical Plots of the Classes........................57
G. Scaling the Tasks.......................................58
H. Setting the Fewest Allowed Points.......................58
I. Assigning Standard Deviations and T-Scores..............58
J. Adjusting the Statistics of a Task......................59
K. Changing the Grading Names..............................59
L. Picking Automatic Grade Cutoffs.........................60
XI. ASSIGNING AND PRINTING THE GRADES AND ATTENDANCE...........61
A. Default Values for Analysis.............................61
B. Printing the Student Scores and Attendance..............66
C. Calculating and Printing Grades.........................67
D. Exporting Data..........................................69
iv
Table of Contents
XII. OTHER PROGRAM FEATURES....................................70
A. Running Other Programs from VAR Grade...................70
B. Dates...................................................70
C. Video Displays..........................................70
D. Mouse Support...........................................71
E. Examples of VAR Grade Batch Files.......................72
XIII. APPENDIX.................................................74
A. Program Parameters--Defaults and Limits.................74
B. Backup Files............................................74
C. Beeps or Noises.........................................75
D. Menus...................................................77
XIV. GLOSSARY..................................................78
XV. FURTHER INFORMATION........................................81
A. Information.............................................81
B. Registration............................................81
v
I. INTRODUCTION TO VAR GRADE
WELCOME TO VAR GRADE! This program has been written to be
flexible enough to allow you to grade your class with the same
methods you now use--except that the program does the tedious
chores of adding, plotting, and writing the scores. The program
has been written by and for teachers and requires no special
knowledge of computers or MS-DOS.
This manual will help both computer novices and computer
experts get the most out of the VAR Grade program. If you are
not an experienced computer user, the manual will show you how to
get started with the program. Before putting data from your own
classes on the computer, we suggest that you go through the
tutorial in Chapter IV, First Use of VAR Grade, which uses a
sample class to illustrate the steps in starting the program. If
you are acquainted with MS-DOS and want to modify the program to
meet your specific needs, the manual contains helpful information
on doing so in Chapter V, Starting the Program. Menus are used
to access all areas of the program. This "menu-driven" program
should be easy to use, but you can also get help at any time by
simultaneously pressing the <Alt> key and the key "H".
One of the most powerful features of the program is its
ability to analyze student grades in a variety of ways. The
tutorials and additional material in Chapter IV will enable you
to examine both individual and group performance using several
different methods of data analysis. The calculations generated
by VAR Grade will give you a great deal of information helpful in
assigning final grades. Both you and your students will benefit
from this data, since you can identify clearly how the student is
performing relative to the rest of the class, and also evaluate
the student's work on different assignments. The program also
allows you to generate clear and attractive graphics, which will
answer the question "why did I get this grade?" in detail
probably beyond what any student would expect.
The program can be used for both grades and attendance. You
may grade with either letter or number grades, and you can mix
and match letter and number grades. You can change the points of
any assignment or score at any time. You can also use many
different types of pre-defined assignments (tasks), including
ones that are the sums, averages, and weights of other tasks.
Any task or combination of tasks can be plotted, correlated, and
analyzed statistically. Attendance for your classes can be
recorded. Several categories of attendance are defined by VAR
Grade. Individual student scores can be printed or scores for
each section of the class can be printed. You can control page
length, margins, and type size when printing the data.
1
The program has also been designed to be as immune as
possible from errors on your part. The program checks for
reasonable task scores, will not easily let you exit the program
without saving your data, and will check to ensure that the data
sent to a disk was actually written before letting you exit from
the program. It will also prevent accidental deletions of your
files by making them read-only files (which you cannot delete
with the DOS "del" or "erase" commands). You can also protect
your grades from prying eyes by requiring a password before
allowing access to your data.
The program has been in use for several years, and has
undergone constant improvements and corrections. However,
suggestions are always welcome for additions, deletions, or
improvements to the program. Please send comments! Most of the
recent changes in the program were suggested by people using this
program.
A. Program Features
An unlimited number of students, tasks, and classes of students
are allowed by VAR Grade. Only the amount of memory in your
computer limits these.
1. Entering the students
You can enter the students either by entering their names
directly into the program, or by telling the program to use
a file of names for the students. The "N" option on the
Main Menu will allow a choice between these alternatives.
See Chapter VI, Entering Students, for further information.
You can sort and list students several ways, including by
names, IDs, sections, and task scores. You can display and
print students by their names or their IDs. These can be
Changed in the "Z" option of the Main Menu.
2. The number of sections
The number of sections is initially set at 1 when you first
start a new class. For elementary schools, that is probably
all that you will need. For high schools and colleges,
several sections of the same class are frequently given by
the same instructor. There is a limit of 99 sections of
students in the class.
3. Tasks
Below is a quick overview of tasks. For more information,
see Chapter VII, Defining Tasks. Tasks can be defined or
changed in the "T" option of the Main Menu. Besides
defining tasks, there is a full retinue of tools to
manipulate the tasks after they have been defined.
2
Introduction
(a) Regular tasks
There are ten types of tasks allowed. Two of them
correspond to ordinary number and letter grades. These
can be defined in the "T" section of the Main Menu. You
give a task a name, then, if it is a number task, the
total allowed points for the task.
(i) Number tasks are ones in which you enter numbers as
the grades.
(ii) Letter tasks are ones where the scores are entered
as letters.
(iii) Extra credit tasks are ones where the points are
added to a number task, but the total points of the number
task are not altered. Extra credit tasks are treated in
special ways by the program. As far as the special exams
below are concerned, they have 0 total points.
(b) Special tasks
The second type of tasks are called Special tasks. These
pre-defined tasks are also be specified in the "T" section
of the Main Menu. Special tasks are Sums, Averages,
Highest, Percentages, etc., of other tasks. You do not
enter scores into special tasks. Instead, you pick the
tasks to be counted in the sum (or average, percentage,
highest, etc.) of other tasks. The program then
calculates the scores for you. These scores will be
recalculated each time you change student scores.
(i) Sum tasks
These are tasks that are the sums of other tasks.
Tasks that are not yet entered can be included in the
list of tasks that will be summed. When the tasks are
then defined, they will be included in the sums.
(ii) Averaged tasks
These are tasks that are the average of other tasks.
If you use letter grades, the averages are reported as
scores between the highest (e.g., A) and the lowest
tasks (e.g., F), otherwise they are the numerical
average of the tasks. Any tasks that have not yet been
entered are NOT averaged, so the averages reflect only
those tasks for which the student has had scores
entered.
(iii) Percentage tasks
These are tasks that average other tasks, then convert
those averages to percentages. Like averaged tasks,
3
any tasks that have not yet been entered are not used
in the conversions, so the percentages reported for the
students are for the tasks that have had scores
entered.
(iv) Highest tasks
These are tasks that sum the scores of other tasks,
then the lowest one or more scores are discarded
("throw out the lowest of several scores"). The
program will find the lowest of a set of tasks and add
up only the highest tasks. Scores that are unentered
are discarded first, then the lowest scores that have
been entered are discarded.
(v) Weighted tasks
You can define a task as the sum of other tasks, each
times a weight. Unentered tasks are given a score of 0
for the weighting.
(vi) Final weighted tasks
You can define a task as the sum of other tasks that
are weighted such that the final percentage is what you
specify. This differs from weighted tasks because the
weights in the final weighted tasks are the relative
worth you want each task to be in the total score,
while the weighted task weights are the amount by which
to multiply the scores for each exam.
(vii) Final task
You can define a task as a final task. This task will
keep track of the letter grades assigned in the "G"
option of the Main Menu. These scores are only
assigned in the "G" option.
4. Attendance
On the "A" option of the Main Menu, you can have VAR Grade
also keep attendance for your class. There can be up to 240
days of attendance, with several different types of
attendance (present, absent, late, etc.). The characters
that represent each attendance type can be changed from the
Attendance Menu.
5. Notes
Besides names and IDs, you can enter notes of up to 20
characters for the students. The notes can be anything,
including why a student missed an exam, seat numbers,
nicknames, etc. These notes can be printed along with your
grades.
4
Introduction
6. Entering data
Scores and attendance can be entered spreadsheet style.
Students and their data are listed either by individual
students or by the whole class. Data entry is checked for
valid input, so no scores can entered that have more than
the allowed points.
7. Writing the scores
Using the "W" option of the Main Menu, you can print all the
scores of one student OR the scores you want for an entire
class or combination of sections of the class. Note that
after choosing which way to write out the scores, a menu
will be displayed that will list a number of options for
printing on the Print Menu: which sections, what printer,
and whether to write to the screen only, or also to a disk
file or a printer. Thus, the Print Menu allows great
flexibility in how the program prints the data.
8. Plotting the scores
In the "P" option of the Main Menu, you can plot and graph
the scores of any task you choose. If you grade with
numbers, you also choose the low and high scores to plot.
You can also plot all the scores for one student in the "I"
option of the Plotting Menu.
You can correlate scores on two tasks. The scores will be
plotted against each other and the correlation coefficients
calculated. You will be asked for the high and low scores
for each exam, just as when plotting exam scores.
You can also plot the class scores for any task or set of
tasks. Ranges, means, medians, and standard deviations are
calculated and plotted.
All the plots can be displayed using several fonts, and the
results printed on your printer.
9. Define a grading system
You can pick just about any grading system you want, simply
by renaming the grades and changing their points. You can
also have the program automatically assign grades according
to your grading scale. These and other options are
available in the "G" option of the Main Menu.
5
10. Assign final grades
At the end of an task or semester, you can assign grades and
have the grades and grade cutoffs neatly printed using the
"G" option of the Main Menu. If you use number grades, you
also can weight exams by adding or multiplying the current
scores by a number, and/or calculate statistics on tasks
(without plotting scores).
11. Printers
You can tell the program which printer that you are using.
In fact, to be able to print graphs and plots, you need to
pick a printer during installation or on the "Z" option of
the Main Menu, with section "P". Virtually every printer is
now supported by VAR Grade for printing graphs and plots.
Most are also supported for printing files in pica, elite,
and compressed characters (if your printer supports them).
For unsupported printers, you can find the codes in your
printer manual, and enter the necessary codes to support
your printer.
12. Passwords
If you keep your grades on a computer that is accessible to
others, you can prevent most people from "browsing" in the
student data by telling the program that you want to use a
password. The password can be up to 15 characters long, and
can include spaces and punctuation marks. Passwords can be
changed in the "Z" option of the Main Menu.
13. Other program features
Anytime that you want to change some of the current settings
of the program, you can use the "Z" option on the Main Menu.
Some of these are listed above. Among other changes, you
can change (a) the colors of the characters and background,
error messages, help screens, and graph points, (b) the
lines on a screen, and (c) the ways dates are displayed.
6
Introduction
B. Conventions Used in this Manual
Names of files and programs are printed in UPPERCASE letters.
Warnings and notes are printed in italics.
Examples of what to type are in double quotes: "TYPE THIS".
MS-DOS prompts are usually listed as: A>. Anything after the
prompt should be typed.
Example: A> GRADE
The prompt is A>, and you should type "GRADE".
Special keys are those that do not print normal (ASCII) keys.
They are designated in the manual and program by bracketing
the key name with "<" and ">".
Example: <Esc> means the Escape key, <Rtn> means the Return
or Enter key.
C. GSample
To look at the capabilities of VAR Grade, two sample classes
called GSample and GSampleb have been included on Disk #1.
Many of the features of the program have been used for these
classes. To view them, type "GRADE GSAMPLE" if you have a
color monitor or "GRADE GSAMPLEB" if you have a black and white
monitor. These classes are also used for many tutorials seen
in the manual.
7
II. REQUIREMENTS
1. This program will run on an IBM PC or compatible computer.
2. It requires MS-DOS 2.0 or later.
3. It requires at least 300,000 bytes of free memory (memory
LEFT after DOS and memory resident programs like Borland's
SidekickTM are running). If you have 384K memory or greater
in your computer you should have no problem running VAR
Grade.
4. Two 360K disk drives or one drive of 720K or more.
5. The program can run using either a monochrome or a color
monitor. To see graphs and plots, you need a display
adapter that can display graphics (e.g., Hercules, CGA, EGA,
VGA, and others). If you want to print graphs and plots, a
dot matrix, ink jet, or laser printer is required. Grades
can be printed on any printer.
A. Versions
The standard version of this program allows you to have up to
16,000 students in up to 99 sections or groups per class, up to
10,000 tasks per class, 240 attendance days per class, and an
unlimited number of classes. In reality, the limitations are
due to available memory. Should you desire "custom" versions
of this program, they are also available. When you register
your current version, should you desire a custom version,
indicate so and we will try to meet your requirements. The
program will automatically use a math coprocessor chip (8087 or
80287, etc).
B. Files on the Disks
Disk #1:
README.BAT Lists Readme.4 to the screen.
README.4 Introduction to VAR Grade.
GRADE.EXE This is the main program.
INSTALL.EXE Installation program for VAR Grade.
GSAMPLE.PAR Sample class data.
GSAMPLE.DAT Student data for the GSample class.
GSAMPLEB.PAR Sample class data for use on monochrome
monitors.
GSAMPLEB.DAT Student data for the GSampleB class.
Disk #2:
GRADE.OVR This is the overlay for the program.
GRADE.HLP The file containing help screens.
INSTALLP.EXE The program that installs printers.
GPRTDRV.PDT Printer drivers (for INSTALLP).
*.BGI Screen drivers for VAR Grade.
8
Requirements
Disk #3:
GRADE.MAN The VAR Grade Manual.
*.CHR Fonts for the screen drivers.
REGISTER.TXT Registration form.
The installation program will generate another file, GRADE.PDT.
This file contains information needed to print graphs and
screens. After the program is run, an additional file is
created, called GRADE.PRT. This file contains information used
for printing text from VAR Grade.
C. Required Files
For the program to run, it requires:
GRADE.EXE (program)
GRADE.OVR (overlay)
The following files are needed for graphs:
?.BGI (which one depends upon your display adapter)
GRADE.PDT (to print graphs)
*.CHR (to change fonts for graphs)
The following files are used for installing printers:
INSTALLP.EXE (installs new printers)
GPRTDRV.PDT (printer codes, needed by Installp)
D. Where Should the Files Be?
1. If you have DOS 2.X
The required files can be in the default directory or drive,
they can be anywhere in the directories specified by the DOS
PATH command, or they can be in the default directory of any
drive.
2. If you have DOS 3.X or later
The program can be invoked from any drive or directory if
the required files are in the same directory as the program.
Otherwise, the files can be in the default directory or
drive, they can be anywhere in the directories specified by
the DOS PATH command, or they can be in the default
directory of any drive.
9
III. INSTALLATION OF VAR GRADE
When you obtain VAR Grade, it will be on disks. The program
can be run directly from those disks; however, some of the files
are not required, and some of the files are better placed onto
other disks. Therefore, a program has been included on Disk #1
that will set up new disks for you that has the correct files on
the correct disks. VAR Grade can be installed onto either a hard
(fixed) disk or onto floppy (removable) disks. The program
INSTALL will automatically install VAR Grade. You will need to
answer some questions and follow the instructions, but will not
have to worry about what files are needed where. If you prefer
to install the program yourself, directions are given below in
Section B.
A. Using INSTALL
To install the program, you can run the program INSTALL.
Follow the instructions below. INSTALL will not modify any
existing files on your computer.
1. Put Disk #1 (the "Program" disk) into a drive. It can be in
any drive.
2. You will need 4 blank 360K double-sided floppy disks, 2 720K
3 1/2" disks, or 1 megabyte of free disk space on any other
disks. If the disks are not formatted or not empty, you can
format them during the installation. NOTE: The program uses
the MS-DOS format command for formatting, and will only
format disks of 1.44 Megabytes capacity or less. Put one of
these disks into the drive you will install the program
onto. If you are installing onto a hard disk, you will not
need any floppy disks.
3. Type "INSTALL". An opening screen will appear, explaining
the requirements for VAR Grade and how to use the
installation program. If you have a monochrome monitor, you
should type "INSTALL/b" to force the program into black and
white mode. This may be required if you have a Hercules
compatible monochrome board, as these boards often tell
programs (erroneously) that they are color boards.
4. You can exit the installation program, at any time, by
pressing the "Ctrl" and the "C" keys simultaneously
(<CtrlC>), or by pressing the "Ctrl" and the "Break" keys
simultaneously (<Ctrl-Break>). If the program has not
completely installed the program, you may have to start
over.
10
Installation
5. After pressing a key, you will be asked for the directory
where you will be putting the program. If you have only two
disk drives, the program can be installed onto either one of
the two drives. The program will suggest a drive, but you
can change it if you want (e.g., to change it to drive A,
delete the suggested name by pressing the function key
<F10>, then typing "a:", then press <Enter>). If you have a
hard disk, the program will install the files onto the
directory that you specify. The program will suggest
installation onto "C:\VARGRADE", but you can change it to
any other directory and/or drive. If you get a "beep" and
error message, it probably means that you haven't yet put a
disk into the drive.
6. The program will now install the program. If it does not
find the disks or files it needs, it will request that you
put them into the appropriate drives. If the disk does not
have enough room on it for the VAR Grade files, you will be
asked what to do. There are three options: (a) You can
format the disk. This is probably the best option. (b) You
can tell the program to write the files to another disk, or
(c) You can tell the program to write the disk anyway.
Choose this option if you have changed the disk or if you
are installing VAR Grade onto a previous version of the
program. If a previous version of the program is present,
the installation program will ask if the existing files
should be replaced (overwritten). Note that you will only
be asked this once: if you say yes, all the duplicate files
will be replaced.
During the installation, the program will ask you to pick
your printer. NOTE: if your computer cannot display
graphics, this part will be skipped by the installation
program. To do this, you will need the name and model
number of your printer. Use the arrow, page up, and page
down keys to traverse the list and find your printer. Then
press the <spacebar> to select it. You can repeat this
process until you have picked up to 5 printers. When you
have picked all your printers, press <F10>. A file called
GRADE.PDT will be created that has the necessary
information.
7. If there is not enough room on the new Overlay disk for all
the fonts, they will be put on the new Manual disk. If you
decide not to use all the fonts, there should be room on the
Overlay disk for a couple of the fonts.
8. When the installation is completed, a message will be
displayed explaining how to label the disks and how to start
VAR Grade.
11
9. When you run VAR Grade, the disk with the overlays needs to
be in the drive at all times. Part of the program is in
"overlays", which means that some of the program is on the
disk and is read into the program when needed. NOTE: If you
have removed the overlay disk, the program will print a
message asking you to insert the overlay disk it needs to
continue. Also, do not move the disk with the overlays from
one drive to another. It must always be in the drive that
it was in when you started VAR Grade.
B. Installation without INSTALL
To install the program without INSTALL, follow the instructions
below.
1. You need up to 1 megabyte of disk space.
2. The simplest method is just to copy all of the files from
the disks onto a directory of your drive.
3. If you don't have enough room on that drive, the files you
need are:
GRADE.EXE, GRADE.OVR: these don't need to be on the same
disk.
A .BGI file: Which one you need depends upon your display
adapter. The name of the file corresponds to the display
adapter (e.g., HERC.BGI is for Hercules adapters). This
and the following files are needed only if you want to
view graphs of the grades.
A .PDT file: You need to run INSTALLP to install your
printer. Start it by typing
"INSTALLP GPRTDRV.PDT GRADE.PDT 5", then select your
printer(s) (see step A6, above). If you have a monochrome
monitor, you need to add start the program with "INSTALLP
GPRTDRV.PDT GRADE.PDT 5 -m" to force INSTALLP into
monochrome mode. To add or delete printers from VAR
Grade, INSTALLP and GPRTDRV.PDT need to be with the
program.
*.CHR files: To change fonts for the graphs, the CHR files
need to be with the program.
4. The only files that are absolutely required are the program
(GRADE.EXE) and the overlays (GRADE.OVR).
12
IV. FIRST USE OF VAR GRADE
In general, you move around the program by choosing options
on menus. The "Main Menu" is the menu that appears after
specifying a class name. If you choose one of the options on the
Main Menu, the program goes to another set of menus ("secondary
menus"), etc. Below is a short description of how to enter data
for a new class, as well as a list of some of the features of the
program.
A. Printing the Manual
You can print the manual on Disk #3 by typing, at the DOS
prompt:
A> COPY GRADE.MAN PRN
B. Starting the Program
1. Type "GRADE" when in DOS (i.e., at the prompt: A> ). If
you have a monochrome monitor, type "GRADE/B". For more
details, see Chapter V, Starting the Program.
2. You will then be asked for the name of a class. A class
will be highlighted on the screen. Press <Rtn> to select
that class, or use the arrow keys to move the highlight to a
new class before pressing <Rtn>. To access any class not
listed on the screen, type the name and press <Rtn>. If the
program cannot find the class, it will ask if this is a new
class. If it is a new class, answer "Y" for yes. Class
names can be corrected with the <Backspace> key. After a
class has been selected, the Main Menu then appears. This
chapter will describe both how to start a new class and how
to use the class supplied with the program.
C. Using an Existing Class: Tutorial
Start the program as in section A. Next, you will see two
classes highlighted, GSample and GSampleb. If you have a
monochrome monitor, move the highlight to GSampleb by pressing
the left or right arrow keys. If you have a color monitor,
move the highlight to GSample. Press <Rtn>. VAR Grade will
now read the students into the program. For the tutorial,
"GSample" will mean either of the two classes.
A menu will appear. This menu is called the Main Menu. On it
are several options. These options are separated into four
categories. First, there are several options involved with
entering data. Second, there are options regarding analyzing
the student data. Third, there are other options, such as
changing how parts of the program work, seeing the help
screens, and running other programs. Last, there are options
for leaving the class and program. You can use the arrow keys
to move the highlight to a different menu choice. To pick a
choice, either move the highlight to the desired choice, then
press <Rtn>, or just press the key shown on the left side of
the highlight.
1. Entering data
Press "D" on the Main Menu. You will see a list of students
in the class and scores for several of the tasks that have
been defined. Use the arrow keys on the keypad to move
around the class.
(a) Names
Move to the second name, "Axelsen, Diana". The cursor
will be at the end of the name. Press the backspace key.
Next press an "e". The name will now read "Axelsen,
Diane".
(b) Number tasks
Move down to "Crick, Francis". Now move right two cells
to the number "80.00". If you look to the top of that
column, it will say that it is task #1, with the name
"Number 1". The cursor will be at the end of the number.
Press the backspace key 4 times. Now type a "5". The
number should read "85". Move down one cell with the down
arrow. Notice the 85 stays in the previous cell. You do
not have to type a <Rtn> to signal the end of input; just
moving to another cell with the cursor keys is sufficient.
(c) Letter tasks
Now move to "Darwin, Charles". Move right three cells, to
a "B". This is in the column: task #2, "Lette". The
"Lette" is the first five letters of "Letter 2", the name
of task #2. Only the first few letters of each task name
is shown (to show all the letters takes too much screen
space). To change the task score, use the backspace key
to delete the B, then put in a new grade, from A to F.
Notice that if you type any other letters, they will be
ignored by the program. Only valid letters are accepted.
(d) Scrolling to the right
From "Darwin, Charles", task #2, move right four cells
with the right arrow key. Notice that when you moved to
First Use
the fourth cell, the screen shifted to the right. The
names are still listed on the left, but a slightly
different set of tasks is shown. If you want, you can
change the score as before.
(e) Scrolling down
Just as in the previous example, you can also scroll down.
This time you will see more names. Use the down arrow on
the keypad to go all the way to the last person in the
class. Notice that the screen shifts as you do so. You
can scroll through the students and tasks until you find
the data you want to change.
(f) Changing which data is displayed
To change which data is listed on the screen, press
<AltC>. You will see the Display Menu, which asks whether
to display the name, ID, or both. Choose "B", for both.
If there had been more than one section of students in the
class, you would be asked whether to display section
numbers. In GSample, there is only one section of
students. Next, you will be asked whether to display
notes. Press "Y". Last, you will be asked which tasks to
display. Type "1 3:2", then <Rtn>. You have told the
program to list tasks 1, 3, and then 2 on the screen.
You will now see the names, IDs, notes, and task scores
for tasks 1, 3, and 2. You can display any regular tasks
(number, letter, or extra credit), in any order.
You could now alter the data, if you wished.
(g) Exiting
To leave this part of the program, type an <AltS>. The
data you changed will be saved into memory.
2. Analyzing grades
We can see a plot of the scores on task #1 by pressing "P"
when we are on the Main Menu. Next, press a "T" (for three
dimensional). You will be asked which task to plot. Type
in a "1", then a <Rtn>. Next, you will be asked for the
high score to plot. Just type a <Rtn> to allow the program
to choose the highest score. Next, you are asked for the
low score to plot. Again, just type a <Rtn>. You have told
the program to pick the highest and lowest scores in the
class as the highest and lowest points to plot. You will
next see a menu, the Print Menu, that will list several
options, such as printing to a printer, disk file, etc.
Just press "S". The program will display the plot. At the
bottom right of the screen is a message: "Press any key to
continue." When you are through looking at the plot, press
a key. You will return to the Plot Menu. Press an "X" or
<Esc> to exit back to the Main Menu.
3. Writing scores
If you want to list some of the task scores of the class on
the screen, press a "W" when on the Main Menu. You will see
another menu, the Write Data Menu. Press an "S". This will
display the scores of all the students in the class. You
will be asked whether you want to display task scores,
attendance, etc. Pick "T", task scores. You will then be
asked for the list of tasks to display. Type "1:4", then
<Rtn>. You have just told the program to list the first
four tasks in the class. Next, you will be asked if you
want to display the student names, and/or IDs. Press "B" to
display both. Last, you will see the Print Menu. Press "Y"
on the Print Menu to see the scores, stopping at every
screenful of students. When the screen stops, press a key
to see some more. When you have seen all the scores, the
Write Data Menu will appear again. Press "X" or <Esc> to go
back to the Main Menu.
4. Quitting the program
Press "Q" on the Main Menu to leave the class. Since we
changed some of the data, the program will ask you if you
want to save the data before exiting. Press "N" (don't save
the data).
D. Starting a New Class
Start the class as in section A. This time, instead of
pressing <Rtn>, type in a name of a class. You will be asked
if it is a new class, type "Y". The Main Menu will then
appear.
1. First, if there are more than one section of students in
your new class, you will need to increase the number of
sections. You can have up to 99 sections of students in
each class. Press "Z" when on the Main Menu. On the second
menu, press "S" (change the number of sections). Type in
the new number, from 2 to 99, then <Rtn>. Then exit back to
the Main Menu by pressing "X" or <Esc>. If you have several
classes that use the same tasks and turn in the same
assignments, calling them different "sections" of the same
class lets you easily compare them.
2. Next, you want to enter the names of the students. Enter
the names by pressing "N" on the Main Menu. There are
several choices. You can type in only names ("N"), type in
names and IDs ("I"), or load the class names from a files
("F", "A", "C"). Name, IDs, and sections can be changed at
First Use
any time. If you choose "N" or "I", you will be asked for
the section in which to add students. If you are typing in
the names, just enter the names (ending each name with
<Rtn>). If you are also typing in IDs, type them in, too.
If the previous name was entered incorrectly, you can delete
it by typing <F2>. When you have finished entering names,
press <Esc>.
Example: If you are on the Main Menu, type an "N", then "N"
again. The program will ask for the section number. Type
in the section number, then <Rtn>. You can now type in
names, ending each with a <Rtn>. If you misspelled a name,
but did not notice until you were on the next name, press
<F2> to delete the previous name. Retype it in correctly.
After the last name has been entered, press an <Esc>, and an
<Esc> again when the program asks for the section number.
NOTE: The program sorts the names alphabetically. If the
names are entered last name first, they will be sorted by
last name. If they are entered with the first name first,
they will be sorted by first names. The program will
check for duplicate names, so you cannot put the same name
into the same section twice.
If you are entering names from a file, the program will ask
for the name of the file. Flat files are ones where the
names, IDs and exam scores are in columns. For the "F"
(flat file) option, you need to tell the program where the
names and IDs are located in the file. Names longer than 20
characters will be truncated, as will IDs longer than 15
characters. If there are no IDs, sections, or exams, just
tell the program to start at "0" for them. For the "A"
(automatic flat file) and "C" (comma) options, the program
will try to make sense of the names. Comma and quote
delimited files are readable by most spreadsheets. See
below, Chapter VI, Entering Students, for more details on
loading students from files.
3. Tasks are assignments for students. They can be exams,
tests, homework, projects, etc. If you have task scores to
enter into the program, press "T" when on the Main Menu to
define the new assignments. The second menu will ask you
for the number of the task. You will then be asked the name
and total points of the task (if it is a number exam). You
can continue to define as many tasks as you like. There are
ten different types of tasks that can be defined. You must
define a task before you can enter task scores. Note that
if you are grading by numbers, no scores can be entered that
are either higher than the total points of the task or that
are less than the fewest allowed points (as set by you). If
you are using letter grades, only letters defined by you can
be used (the "default" grades are A to F, with + and -
grades, but these can be changed).
4. Next, you can use either the letters as defined by you, or
the "default" grades to enter the scores. Pick the number
of the task or tasks that you want to use. You may enter
scores for multiple tasks or for only one. You then can
enter the scores "by individual" ("I" on the Main Menu), or
"by section" ("D" on the Main Menu). "By individual" lists
all the tasks for one student, while "by section" or class
lists for every student in the class only those tasks that
you have picked. With either method, the program lists the
students by the whichever sort method you have chosen (e.g.,
alphabetically by name). You can use the cursor keys (up,
down, etc.) to move to a new task or student. Pressing
<Rtn> will cause the program to move to the next task, while
using the cursor keys will move you up, down, or over to new
tasks.
NOTE: If you are "using" cursor keys, you move between
students with <Ctrl>-cursor keys.
5. When you are finished entering data, press <AltS> to exit
the section and save the data to memory. Next, when on the
Main Menu, type an "S" to save the data to a disk file. The
program will ask for the class name. Most of the time, you
will just type <Rtn>. If you want to change the name of the
class or the directory where it is located, you can do so
before pressing <Rtn>.
E. Entering Data
In general, if you are asked to "enter" data, end it with
"<Rtn>" or a cursor key, when you are asked to "press" a key,
only one key needs to be pressed.
1. Menu choices
The program accepts as input only the keys listed on the
menu, and will respond to the key when it is pressed.
When you are asked for a menu choice, to select it you can
(a) press the key, OR (b) use the cursor keys to pick the
correct choice and press the Return or Enter key, OR (c) use
a mouse to select the choice and press the left button.
First Use
2. Entering numbers
When you type numbers in, you must press the return key
(<Rtn>) or, a cursor key (arrow, page up and down, etc.) to
signal the end of your data.
A <Rtn> alone, with no number, tells the program:
(a) do not change the current value; OR
(b) end current input of the number; OR
(c) let the program choose the appropriate number.
Which possibility (a, b, or c) that the program will use is
stated when the data is requested.
3. Selecting and entering names
When you enter words or names, you must press either the
return key (<Rtn>) or a cursor key (arrow, page up and down,
etc.) to signal the end of your data.
When names of classes or students are listed on the screen,
the cursor keys can be used to select the student or class
name. Select the desired name with the cursor keys, then
press <Rtn>.
F. If You Are Lost
If you are lost, or want to return to the Main Menu, you can
usually reach it by repeatedly pressing the <Esc> key.
G. Exiting the program
Normally, you exit the program by going thru the Main Menu.
To exit, pick the "Q" (quit the program) option. If any
data has been changed, the program will ask if you want the
changes to be saved. You can also exit from almost anywhere
in the program by pressing Ctrl-C (the Control key and the
"C" key simultaneously: <CtrlC>). Again, if student data
has been changed, you will be prompted about saving it
before leaving the program. The key combination Ctrl-Break
has no effect while in the program.
H. How Special Keys are Used
These keys are not used in all parts of the program, but will
be used in most parts. Other keys are also used, but these are
listed on the screen when they can be used.
Key Name of key Program Function
<Esc> Escape Exit this program section.
<Rtn> Return, Enter End of input.
<Pg Up> Page Up List previous screen.
<Pg Dn> Page Down List next screen.
<Home> Home Go to the first screen.
<End> End Go to the last screen.
<F1> Function key 1 Use all choices, or select the
next available choice.
<F2> Function Key 2 Delete previous entry.
<F10> Function Key 10 To delete current entry.
<AltH> Alt-H HELP--always available.
<AltU> Alt-U Undo that field when entering
numbers or words.
<CtrlC> Control C Exit from the program. If data
has been changed, you will be
asked whether it should be saved
before exiting the program.
I. How the cursor keys work
You have options as to how you want the cursor keys to work.
If you do not redefine the functions of the cursor keys, they
will work as follows:
<Home>, <Ctrl-Pg Up> Go to the first name or cell
<End>, <Ctrl-Pg Dn> Go to the last name or cell
<Pg Up> Go up one screen
<Pg Dn> Go down one screen
<Left Arrow> Go left one cell or column
<Right Arrow> Go right one cell or column
<Ctrl-Home> Go up one half column
<Ctrl-End> Go down one half column
<Up Arrow> Go up one name or line
<Down Arrow> Go down one name or line
<Ctrl-Left Arrow> Go left two columns
<Ctrl-Right Arrow> Go right two columns
<Backspace> Delete previous character
You can switch between using or not using edit keys in the "Z"
section of the Main Menu. Furthermore, if you choose to use
edit keys, you can use "insert" or "overstrike" modes. Just
press the <Ins> key to switch between these modes. In insert
mode, the characters are inserted at the position of the
cursor, with the rest of the characters pushed to the right.
First Use
In overstrike mode, the character typed replaces the one that
was at the cursor. If you "use" edit keys, by redefining their
functions, you will be able to move left or right in the data
with the cursor keys functioning as they would in a word
processor. If you switch to "using" the edit keys, they will
be redefined as follows:
<Home> Go to the first character.
<End> Go to the last character.
<Left Arrow> Go left one character.
<Right Arrow> Go right one character.
<Ctrl-Left Arrow> Go left one name or cell.
<Ctrl-Right Arrow> Go right one name or cell.
<Del> Delete the character at the cursor.
<Ins> Switch between Insert and Overwrite
modes.
V. STARTING THE PROGRAM
This part of the manual tells you how to start the program,
including where to place your files, where to put your class
grades, and how to locate class files from the program. It will
also explain how to access help and the manual from the program.
You should have already installed the program (see Chapter II).
A. Where Should the Program Files Be?
1. For DOS beginners
Before starting the program, make sure that all the program
files listed above in Chapter II, Requirements, are in the
current directory of one disk, or, if the program has been
installed onto floppy disks, on the current directories of
two disks.
At the DOS prompt, type: "GRADE"
If you are not a DOS expert, go to section B.
2. For DOS experts
The program will search the current environment for the
program files. This means that the search for the files are
in the following order:
(i) It searches the current directory first.
(ii) It then searches for the files in the directory where
the "GRADE.EXE" file was found.
(iii) It then searches the directories specified by the
DOS PATH command. NOTE: The PATH command tells DOS which
directories to search for executable files: those ending
in ".COM", ".EXE", or ".BAT".
(iv) If it still hasn't found the files, it searches the
default directories on each drive in your computer.
(v) If the program files are still not found, the program
will halt with an error message.
The required files, therefore, are most logically placed in
one directory of a hard disk or on two floppy disks, as is
done by INSTALL.
22
Starting the Program
(a) MS-DOS 3.X or above
The program can be started from any directory by just
typing the directory and "GRADE". For example, if the
program is in the directory c:\class, just type
"c:\class\GRADE". If the program files are in the same
directory as the GRADE.EXE file, the program will find the
files it needs. Note that this will only work in DOS 3.X,
not in DOS 2.X.
(b) MS-DOS 2.X
Because the program can find the necessary files if the
program has been installed correctly, you can then keep
the program files in one directory, and the class files in
another. Just make sure that the PATH command specifies
the directory where the program is located. Read your MS-
DOS manual for directions on how to use the PATH command.
If you know the name of the class that you want to grade
before you enter the program, you can enter the class name
as a parameter on the command line: e.g., if the class is
called "BIOLOGY", type "GRADE BIOLOGY" at the DOS prompt.
The BIOLOGY class data will automatically be read into the
program. The class name can include a path, so, if the
BIOLOGY class is located in the c:\science directory, you
can start the program with "GRADE C:\SCIENCE\BIOLOGY".
(c) Examples
(i) If the program is on the same drive as the class (the
"A>" is the DOS prompt):
For example, type:
A> GRADE
If the program is on a different drive, type the drive,
colon, GRADE.
For example, if you are on drive A, and the program
is on drive B, type:
A> B:GRADE
The program will find the overlay, print, and help
files if they are on the default directory or on any
directory specified by the path command.
23
(ii) If you know the name of the class that you want to
use, enter it on the DOS command line:
A> GRADE classname OR
A> GRADE \path\classname
(iii) If you are using a hard disk, you may want to set up
a batch file that will do the typing for you:
Batch file example:
If GRADE (including the necessary files) is in the
directory, C:\CLASS, prepare a batch file that says:
SET PATH=C:\CLASS;
GRADE
OR
SET PATH=C:\CLASS;
GRADE classname
(iv) If you are using DOS 3.X, you can start the program
by typing the directory and "GRADE":
If VAR Grade is in the directory C:\CLASS, type
C:\CLASS\GRADE
OR
C:\CLASS\GRADE classname
(v) If you have a monochrome monitor, you may need to
start the program with:
GRADE/B classname
This will force the program into monochrome mode. Many
Hercules compatible display adapters erroneously tell
programs that a color monitor is attached. The results
are that some color combinations are invisible to you.
You can also force the program into monochrome mode
with a DOS SET command:
A> SET VMON=BW;
You can set up a batch file for VAR Grade as follows
(assuming the program is in the directory C:\VARGRADE):
SET VMON=BW;
SET PATH=C:\VARGRADE;
GRADE
24
Starting the Program
If you have a monochrome monitor, you probably want to
add that command to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file. This file
is executed every time you start your computer.
(d) Using one drive to run the program
You can start the program from one 360K drive by putting
the program disk in the drive, and typing "GRADE". When
the program cannot find the overlay file, you will be
asked to put the disk containing the file into a drive.
If you now put it in the same drive that the program disk
was in, the program will continue and run correctly.
B. Picking a Class
When the program starts, the first screen shows the program
name, a comment about registering the program, the class files
and directories listed on the directory from which the program
was invoked, and a prompt for the class.
If there are any files on the disk that have the extension
".PAR", they will be listed by the program on the opening
screen. The ".PAR" file contains the parameters of your class:
exam names, default settings for the program, etc. To help you
find the right class, sub-directories are also listed.
You can either type in the name of the class, or you can use
the cursor keys to locate the class.
1. Using the cursor keys
One of the class files or a directory will be highlighted.
If you have a monochrome monitor and do not see a class
highlighted, try starting the program with "GRADE/B" to
force the program into monochrome mode. To pick the correct
class, use the cursor keys to move the highlight to the
correct class or directory. Then press <Rtn>. If you chose
a directory, a new listing of classes will be shown. Repeat
the above process until a class is chosen.
NOTE: If any characters have been typed on the prompt line,
the program will use them as the class name. You can delete
these by using the <F10> key.
2. Typing in the name
(a) If the class that you want is not listed, you can change
directories and search for the class. There are two ways
to change directories:
i) Press <F5>, then type in the name of the new drive or
directory. You can continue to change directories
until you find the desired class.
25
ii) Type the new drive or directory instead of the class
name. The program first tests to determine whether
what you have typed is a directory. If it is, the
directory is changed. NOTE: The new directory must end
in a backslash ("\"), or the new drive must end in a
colon (":").
(b) If and when your class is listed, just type the name in.
The ".PAR" is not needed, and any extensions, like .PAR,
are discarded. The program will read in the class
parameters, and, if a file with the same name with the
extension ".DAT" is also there, the student scores will be
read into the program.
3. Starting new classes
Type in the name of the class. When the program does not
find the ".PAR" file, it will ask if this is a new class--if
it is, press "Y". The new class will be created.
Each class has two files. Each starts with the name of the
class (e.g. "BIOLOGY"). They have the extensions ".PAR" and
".DAT" (e.g. "BIOLOGY.PAR" and "BIOLOGY.DAT"). There may
also be backup files with the extensions ".PAX" and ".DAX"
(see the Appendix for further details).
4. Using the DOS command line
You may also enter the class name from the command line by
listing it as a parameter: e.g. if the class name is "MATH",
start the program by typing: "GRADE MATH". If the class
exists, it will be read into the program. If it does not,
you will be asked if it is a new class. If you say that it
is not, you will be asked to reenter a class name until you
have picked the desired class.
C. Converting Old Classes Into New Classes
If you want to use the same exams and class information for two
different classes, just copy the "CLASSNAME.PAR" file to a new
classname (e.g., copy "BIOLOGY.PAR" to the file "MATH.PAR" by
typing, at the DOS prompt: "COPY BIOLOGY.PAR MATH.PAR". Math
will now be set up exactly the same way as Biology). The new
class is now set up the same as the previous class, except that
no students will be in the new class. This feature can allow
you to set up your class once and use the set-up for many
classes in the future.
D. Classes Too Big for the Memory
After the classname is entered, the program will read in the
class data and student information. If there are more students
than can fit in the available memory, the program will warn you
26
Starting the Program
and ask if you want to continue. If you continue, the program
will read ONLY as many students into the class as there is
memory. WARNING: If you then use the program and save the
data, the students that were not read into the program will be
lost. To find out approximately how many students can be read
into the program, enter a "Z" when in the Main Menu. At the
top of the second menu you will see how many students are
currently in the class and how many could be in the class if
all the available memory is used and if the current exams are
not increased. There are essentially an unlimited number of
students and exams allowed. The limitations are that all the
data must be able to fit into the available memory.
Part of the program is in overlays. This means that part of
the program is on disk, not in memory. When the program
starts, it leaves a certain amount of memory free, and uses the
rest for overlays. You can change how much of the program is
in memory with a DOS SET command. If you need more memory,
enter the following command at the DOS prompt:
A> SET OMEM=0;
This command will shrink the program to its minimum size.
Conversely, to put all the program into memory, use the
command:
A> SET OMEM=150000;
You can add either SET command to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file that
is executed when you start your computer. This way, the
program will always use the amount of memory you want. You can
vary the number from 0 to 150000 to get variable amounts of the
program in memory.
E. Setting Up the Class
Anytime that you want to change some of the current settings of
the program, you can use the "Z" option on the Main Menu.
1. The number of sections
The number of sections is initially set at 1 when you first
start a new class. For example, if you teach 3 English
classes that have identical exams and assignments, you can
call them different sections of the same class. You can
then compare the different classes as "sections". Each
section uses the same set of exams, but the program can do
statistics on any combination of sections. The program
keeps track of what sections you last used, and will, by
default, use whatever sections that were last used by you.
To set the number of sections, go to the "Z" option of the
Main Menu, then into "S". Just enter the number of sections
that you have in the class.
27
2. Colors
Yes, the default colors of the program can be changed! This
can be done in the "Z" option of the Main Menu, then "C".
There are several colors used, designated:
(i) Normal colors: The text is in this color.
(ii) Background color: The background is this color.
(iii) Highlight color: This color is used for plotting
scores, and is used to make the scores standout better.
(iv) Error colors: For error messages.
(v) Help colors: Colors used by the Help screens.
Some of these colors are used in pop-up menus and messages,
as well. To change the colors, press "Z" on the Main Menu,
then "C" (color) on the second menu. You will be asked for
the new colors. The bottom lines of the screen show what
the colors would look like. Needless to say, if you are
using a monochrome monitor, you will only get black and
white. Some monochrome adapter boards tell the program that
they are color boards. This results in some things becoming
invisible or not highlighted when they should be. If this
is the case for you, you can force VAR Grade into monochrome
mode by either of two methods:
(a) Start the program with "GRADE/B". The /B tells the
program that you are using a black and white monitor.
(b) Set a DOS command: "SET VMON=BW;". At the DOS prompt
(e.g., A>), type the above statement. This tells the
program you are using a black and white monitor. This
command can also be put into your AUTOEXEC.BAT file that is
run when your computer is turned on.
3. Files
The class grade files are, by default, written in what is
known as "read-only" files. This means that if you are in
DOS and ask that the files be deleted, they will not be
deleted by DOS. The program does this to prevent accidental
deletions of the data, but this can sometimes cause problems
with other programs, most notably some backup programs. You
can change the way files are written by specifying that they
be written normally (they can be deleted by DOS), as read-
only files, or that they be "hidden" files (DOS will not
even list the files on a "dir" command). Hidden files will
still be seen by VAR Grade, but not by anyone casually
snooping around your disk. To do this, go to the "Z" option
of the Main Menu, then pick "F". Then just choose the type
of file for writing the student data.
Backup files are normally made of your grades. These
backups contain the data from the previous time that you
saved your data. The backup files have the same name as the
28
Starting the Program
class, but have the extensions ".DAX" and ".PAX". NOTE: The
appendix gives more information on these files. No matter
in which type of file the class data is written (read-only,
hidden, or normal), the backup files are made normal files.
This means that they can be deleted should you not want to
clutter up your disk with them. However, if you prefer not
to have the program make backup files, you can use the "B"
option on the Parameters Menu to prevent backups. It is
strongly recommended that you let back-up files be made and
that you let the program write the class files as read-only.
The combination of these two options will give your data
much greater security.
4. Printers
You can tell the program which printer you are using. In
fact, to be able to print graphs and plots, you need to pick
a printer during installation or in the "P" section of the
"Z" option of the Main Menu. Virtually every printer is now
supported by VAR Grade for printing graphs and plots. Most
are also supported for printing files in pica, elite, or
compressed printing (if your printer supports them), and
bold and high quality. For unsupported printers, if you can
find the codes in your printer manual, you can enter the
necessary printer codes to support your printer (See Chapter
X: Printing the Grades).
5. Passwords
If many people have access to your computer and its disks,
you may worry about someone's altering your class files. To
greatly reduce the chances of this happening, you can
require that a password be used for your class. To define a
password, use the "W" option in the "Z" section of the Main
Menu.
Note: The default value is not to have a password. The
password can have up to 15 characters, numbers, and/or
punctuation characters. Should you forget your password,
you can contact us at the address at the end of the manual
to get instructions on how to defeat the password. (Note:
you MUST be registered to receive help.) The password is
not foolproof, but greatly reduces the likelihood of
snooping.
F. Entering Students, Tasks, Attendance, and Grades
There are two kinds of prompts in the program. The first, like
the prompt asking for the classname, asks you to Enter the name
and then type a <Rtn> to signify the end of the data. The
second type only asks for one key--this option is usually used
for the menu selections. To save keystrokes, the program will
respond immediately when the key is pressed--no <Rtn> is
necessary. When you are presented with a list of choices, you
29
can use the cursor keys to move to the desired choice, then
type <Rtn> to select that choice.
NOTE: In many parts of the program, if you enter a <Rtn> with
no data entered, the program will assume either that: (a) you
did not want to enter data--the program will continue; or (b)
you want to exit this section and go back to a higher level
menu; or (c) the number to be entered is zero.
In general, if the program asks you to enter data, you should
end with a <Rtn>. If you are choosing a menu option or between
two alternatives, press only the appropriate key. When you
have to enter a long list of numbers, such as designating Task
80 as the sum of Tasks 1 to 79, the program will allow you to
enter them with an inclusive colon: "1:79" would be 1 through
79, rather than requiring you to enter all the numbers from 1
to 79. This situation arises in three places: when entering
lists of tasks, as noted in the example, when entering lists of
sections to use, and when entering attendance days. Colons can
be used to enter a list of numbers from high to low, as well.
Entering "79:1" will tell the program to use tasks 79 down to
1.
Example: To enter tasks 1 thru 5 and 8, type:
"1:5<Rtn>8<Rtn><Rtn>".
NOTE: When entering a list of separate numbers, you can
separate them with <Rtn>s, commas, or spaces. For the above
example, typing "1:5,8,<Rtn>" or "1:5 8 <Rtn>" will give the
same result.
Later chapters in this Manual will tell you how to enter
students, tasks, attendance, and grades.
G. Reading the Manual and Help screens
If the files GRADE.HLP and/or GRADE.MAN are present in the
default directory of any drive or in any directory specified by
the DOS path command, then you can read them from the program
(See Chapter V Section A, above). When the program is on the
Main Menu, type an "H" for help or an "M" for the manual. The
help screen is much shorter and less detailed than this manual.
The help screen can also be reached from anywhere in the
program by typing <AltH> (press the ("Alt" and the "H" keys
simultaneously). The help reached from <AltH> is context
sensitive. This means that VAR Grade will try to find the
relevant material from the help file. You can browse at will
through the file by using the cursor keys. When in Help or the
Manual, typing <AltK> will show you a list of the keys and
features supported. If there is not enough memory to display
the file, an error message will appear. To view the file, you
would then have to reduce memory use (See Section D, above).
30
Starting the Program
Moving with the keys in HELP or the MANUAL:
<Up Arrow> Up one line
<Down Arrow> Down one line
<Page Up> Up one screen
<Page Down> Down one screen
<Ctrl-Home> Up one-half screen
<Ctrl-End> Down one-half screen
<Home>, <Ctrl-Pg Up> Beginning of the file
<End>, <Ctrl-Pg Down> End of the file
<AltL> GO TO LINE: The top line will be the
line that you designate. In the center
of the screen a box will appear that
will ask for the line number. At the
bottom right of the screen, you can see
which line you are on and how many lines
there are in the file. Example: type
"<AltL>4<Rtn>" to go to line 4.
<AltS> GO TO SCREEN: The top line will be the
first line of any screen that you enter.
In the center of the screen a box will
appear that will ask for the screen.
The total number of screens and the
screen that you are currently on are
shown at the bottom right corner of the
screen. Example: type "<AltS>8<Rtn>" to
go to screen 8.
To locate text:
<AltF> Find a string
<AltN> Find the next matching string
<AltB> Find the previous matching string
<AltK> Show the supported keys
<AltR> Return to the previous screen
31
VI. ENTERING STUDENTS
One of the first things that you will do when starting a new
class is to enter the names of students into the program. This
Chapter tells you how to enter new students into the class, add
IDs, change the names of students, and sort and list the students
in the class.
A. General Methods
When the Main Menu is on the screen, choose the "N" (Name)
option. Several options will be listed on a new menu, the Add
Student Menu. You can type the names into the program via
options Name only ("N"), or by Name and ID ("I"). You can
import (read) names into the class from flat files ("F" and
"A"), or comma and quote files ("C").
B. Names and IDs
The student names can be up to 20 characters long, and can
include spaces and punctuation. The program can sort the
students alphabetically by their names for printing out scores,
so it is usually better to enter the names last name first.
Spelling is retained exactly as you enter it, except that
leading and trailing spaces are ignored. When sorting,
however, lower and upper case letters are not distinguished, so
"Sue" is considered to be the same as "sue".
ID numbers or other names (nicknames, etc.) can be entered as
"IDs". At some colleges and universities, students are given
their grades by student numbers rather than by name. You can
use IDs for first or last names and the "name" for the last or
first name. You can change IDs, or add them later in the
several sections of the program. IDs can be up to 15
characters long, and can include spaces and punctuation. The
program can sort by IDs as well as names. Spelling is
retained, but, as in sorting names, sorts do not distinguish
between lower and upper case letters.
C. Typing in Names and IDs
1. Names only
You add names on the "N" option on the Add Students Menu.
You first need to tell the class which section you want to
enter students. Pick a number from 1 to 99. To enter
names, you just need to type in the name, ending with a
<Rtn>. If the name is already present in the section, it is
NOT reentered and an error message results. The same name
32
Entering Students
can be used in two different sections of the same class.
To delete the letters you have typed, and hence remove the
name, type an <F10>. The <F10> command works in all parts
of the program. Names can be changed later in several parts
of the program (see below). If you added the previous name
in error, you can delete it with an <F2> (backup) command.
When you have added all the names, press the escape key
(<Esc>). You will exit back to where you are asked for the
section numbers again. To exit, press <Esc> again.
2. Names and IDs
This option, "I" on the Add Students Menu, works the same as
for adding names only. The only difference is that you are
asked for the ID, as well. Deleting an ID or Name with <F2>
will remove the previous student from the class.
3. Adding, changing, and deleting names, IDs, and notes
Names, IDs, and notes can also be added, changed, or deleted
in four other places of the program. The details are
described in later chapters. The four places are: (i) "I"
on the Main Menu: Individual students; (ii) "D" on the Main
Menu: Data entry for tasks of the class; (iii) "A" on the
Main Menu, then "I": Adding attendance for individual
students; and (iv) "A" on the Main Menu, then "C": Data
entry for class attendance.
Student notes are a field in the student records that can be
used to enter up to 20 characters. Notes can be used to
enter seating arrangements, comments, nicknames, or anything
else you may want. They can be printed, but otherwise are
not used much by VAR Grade. They can be entered and changed
in the same four places of the program mentioned above.
(a) When individuals are listed
In the attendance by individual students (iii, above) or
Tasks by individual students (i, above), all the tasks or
attendance for a student are listed. If you press the
<AltI> key (insert student), you will be presented with a
blank form to enter the new name. Entering any letters
will add the student to the class. An "Empty" or blank
name will be deleted or not entered into the class, and
the deletion can be quickly done by using the <F10> key.
Note: when a student has been deleted, his or her name and
all associated data are deleted. Changing the spelling of
the name, ID, or note, or changing the section number for
the student, is also possible here. Note: only sections
that have been defined are allowed as sections for the
student. You can increase the number of sections in the
"Z" section of the program.
33
(b) When the whole class is displayed
If you need to add a new name when in parts ii or iv
(above), use the key <AltI>. A new line will be displayed
on the screen. As above, removing a student name will
remove that student and the associated data from the
class. Blank names are removed from the class only when
you leave that section of the program.
A second way to delete the student is with the <AltD> key.
The student will be deleted immediately, and the rest of
the class moved up one line. Note: when a student has
been deleted, his or her name and all associated data are
deleted.
You can also change the names, IDs, notes, or sections for
a student by using the cursor keys or a mouse to move to
the cell with the name, ID or section and typing in the
new name or ID for that student. To see any students not
listed on the screen, use the cursor or Alt keys (as
listed at the top of the screen). The cell highlighted is
the one that will be used for data input. You can use the
<F10> key to completely delete the ID or name.
If you start altering the data, then decide the original
data was correct, you can retrieve the data if you haven't
moved from that cell. Use the <AltU> (undo) key to get
the original data back.
(c) Recovering deleted data
Data that has been changed or deleted is normally lost.
There are, however, two ways to recover the data if you
immediately decide to "undelete" it:
(i) quit the program without saving the data to disk.
Any data entered in this session will not be saved.
(ii) if you have already saved the data from the class,
use the backup files to recover the data from the
previous session. More information on how to do this
is located in the Appendix.
D. Importing Students from Files
You can also enter names via text files. VAR Grade will import
data that is written by many other programs, including most
spreadsheet programs.
1. Importing flat files
Many spreadsheets will export (write) data in a flat file.
A flat file is one where the data is listed in columns. All
the names of students are in one column, all the IDs in
another, etc. In the "F" option of the Add Students Menu,
34
Entering Students
you can pick a flat file of student names, IDs, sections,
and/or task scores, tell VAR Grade which columns the name,
IDs, sections, and tasks are in, and have the data
automatically loaded into the class. The file must have
been previously prepared by deleting lines that do not have
student names on them, or else the program will try to load
those lines as well. An example of a flat file is listed
below:
Jones, Fred 123 1 34.5 23.5 B 44
Smith, Ann 321 2 43.5 18.3 B 43
To load new students into the class, the program will first
ask for the filename of the flat file. It will then display
the contents of the file across the top of the screen, along
with a ruler. You now have to tell the program what data is
where. First, you need to tell the program where the
student names are. An answer of 0 tells the program that
data is missing from the file. Next you tell the program
where the IDs, notes, sections, and tasks are located. For
the tasks, you will also be asked for the number of the
task. Data then will be read into the program. For the
tasks, if the data is numeric, it will be read in as number
tasks; if it is not numeric, the data will be read in as
letter tasks. In the above example, suppose the first
column is the names, the second the IDs, the third the
sections, and the next four are tasks. The sixth column
(third task) would be read in as a letter task. The tasks
would be numbered as the first four unused tasks in your
class, and given names (e.g., Number task 1, Number task 2,
Letter task 3, and Number task 4).
2. Importing comma & quote files
Many spreadsheets also can read in data from files where the
data is not in columns, but is instead separated by commas.
Data that has commas in it, e.g., student names, are kept
together by double quotes (""). The "C" option of the Add
Students Menu lets you import data from these files. An
example of data in the file might be:
"Jones, Fred", "123", 1, 34.5, 23.5, B, 44
"Smith, Ann", "321", 2, 43.5, 18.3, B, 43
The program will assume that the student names are in the
first field, the IDs in the next, and the next five are
tasks. For the tasks, the fourth one will be a letter task;
the others will be number tasks. As in the flat files, the
names of the exams will be made by the program, and the
first five unused tasks will be used for the new tasks. If
this is not what you want, you have another option. You
might include this as the first line of the file:
"Name", "ID", "Section", "One", "Two", 8, "#4"
35
This line would tell the program that the first field is the
name, the second is the ID, the third is the section, the
fourth and fifth are number tasks (they are numbers) with
the names One and Two, the sixth is a Letter task 8, and the
last field is a number task with the name #4. NOTE: Whether
they are letter or number tasks is determined by the student
data, not from the first line. On the first line, "Name"
tells the program that field is student names, "ID" tells it
is IDs, "Notes" means student notes, "Section" refers to
sections, and any other words are treated as tasks. These
need to be the entire label for the fields, but whether the
labels are in upper and/or lower case letters is not
important. For the tasks, anything that is a number (like
8) is taken as the desired number of the task (the program
will make up a name for the task), and anything that is not
a number will be taken as the name (with its number being
the first unused task). Whether the tasks are made number
or letter tasks are determined by the data on line two (the
first student).
3. Automatic flat file imports
The "A" option on the Add Students Menu works like the
previous one ("C"), except that the fields are separated by
one or more spaces, not by commas. The method of
determining the type of data is the same as that used for
the comma and quote files.
E. Sorting Students
Students can be sorted by a variety of methods, including by
name only, by name and section, by ID only, by ID and section,
by section only, by the scores of any defined task, or by no
sorts. You can change the method of sorting in the "Z" option
of the Main Menu, then "A" (alter the method of sorting the
class). The change is "permanent" in that the program will
remember which sorting method was used and will continue to use
that method until told differently. Sorts are not done until
you are finished altering data, so if you add new students, the
names will not be alphabetized or sorted until you exit back to
the Main Menu.
You can have the program list the students via their names OR
by their IDs. This affects how the students are listed when
you see lists of students on the screen. When you print the
scores, you are also asked how you want the class listed to the
printer.
36
VII. DEFINING TASKS
Tasks are graded assignments for students. They can be
homework, exams, tests, papers, or anything else that is graded.
There are ten different predefined types of tasks in VAR Grade.
The tasks are divided into two categories: (1) Regular tasks are
those where you enter grades. There are three types of regular
tasks. (2) Special tasks are those that you do not enter grades
into. These include sums, averages, percentages, etc. There are
seven types of special tasks. Defining, removing, and redefining
tasks can be done from the Task Type Menu, the "T" option of the
Main Menu.
A. Regular Tasks
You can enter tasks as numbers (Number tasks), you can enter
them as letters (Letter tasks), or you can enter them as extra
credit (Extra credit tasks). These can be defined in the "T"
section of the Main Menu. You give a task a name, then, if it
is a number task, the total allowed points for that task.
1. Number tasks
Number tasks are ones in which you enter numbers as the
grades. The maximum allowed points for any regular task is
one million! The program checks the scores of every student
when you put in the scores to make sure they do not exceed
the maximum allowed points. If the score does exceed it,
that score is rejected, and a new score must be entered.
This validation of scores reduces the number of errors made
while entering student scores. Tasks that have 0 or less
total points are ignored by Special tasks.
2. Letter tasks
Letter tasks are ones where the scores are entered as
letters. The program will converts them to numbers, but the
score can be entered, printed, and manipulated as a letter
grade.
The standard or default grading system is an A is 4.0, a B
is 3.0, a C is 2.0, etc. Plusses are 0.3 points higher
(except A+), and minuses are 0.3 points below the grade
(e.g. B- = 2.7; C+ = 2.3). You can, however, define any
grading system that you want, including the names and points
for each grade, as long as the total grade types does not
exceed 12 (see Chapter XI, Section ). If you do change the
grading system, you should do it before you enter any letter
grades. The program stores the grades as numbers, not as
letters. Thus, changing the points allowed for letter
37
grades after some letter grades have been assigned can
result in incorrect scores.
3. Extra credit tasks
Extra credit tasks are ones where the points can be added to
a number task, but the total points of the number task are
not altered. Extra credit tasks are treated in special ways
by the program. The extra credit tasks need to have the
total points be specified, just like number tasks. However,
this number is used only to check data entry. As far as the
special exams (below) are concerned, extra credit tasks have
0 total task points, but the student scores are used in the
calculations for special tasks. In the case of discarding
the lowest of a list of tasks, if the extra credit score is
one of lowest scores, it will be discarded. This may not be
what you want, so you should consider this potential problem
before you include extra credit tasks in the definitions of
Highest Tasks.
B. Special Tasks
The second type of tasks are called Special tasks. These can
also be specified in the "T" section of the Main Menu. Special
tasks are Sums, Averages, Highest, Percentages, etc., of other
tasks. You do not enter scores into special tasks. Instead,
you define the task as the sum (average, percentage, highest,
etc.) of other tasks. The program then calculates the scores
for you. These scores will be recalculated each time you
change student scores.
Note: Tasks with 0 or less total points are ignored by special
exams.
For example: at the end of the term, you probably want to add
up all the task scores in the class. You can specify a task,
e.g. #30, as the sum of all the previous tasks (#1 through
#29). Task #30 is a special task called a "sum task". Since
any of the 10,000 possible task numbers can be either a special
or regular task, you can, for example, define special tasks as
the sums of quizzes, tests, and/or homework.
One limitation for defining special tasks is that they can be
defined only as tasks acting on other tasks with lower numbers.
Allowing you to add or sum tasks with the same or higher
numbers could result in circular definitions that would confuse
the computer and produce nonsense or variable results. A
second limitation applies only to sums of tasks. The total
points allowed for a "sum task" (like task #30 above), is
9,999,999 (less than 10 million points). The ability to
specify any task as the sums of others is a very powerful
feature that should allow great flexibility when you analyze
student scores.
38
Defining Tasks
NOTE: Tasks can be removed by using the "R" (remove) option on
this second menu or by redefining the task as a new task. To
remove, choose the "R" (Remove) option. Then choose the task
number or numbers at the prompt. Since all student data for
the task(s) is also removed, you will be asked again to make
sure that you want to remove the task(s).
1. Sum tasks
These are tasks that are the sums of other tasks. Tasks can
be summed multiple times.
Example: Task 5 can be the sum of task 1 + task 1 + task 1.
This would be the equivalent of multiplying the task by 3.
Tasks that are not yet entered can be included in the list
of tasks that will be summed. When the tasks are then
defined, they will be included in the sums.
NOTE: The sums of all the tasks in a Sum task must be less
than 10 million points.
2. Averaged tasks
These are tasks that are the average of other tasks. Task 5
can be the average of tasks 1 through 4. If you use letter
grades, the averages are reported as scores between the
highest (e.g. A) and the lowest tasks (e.g., F), but the
average is shown with numbers, not letters. Any tasks that
have not yet been entered are NOT averaged, so the averages
reflect only those tasks for which the student has had
scores entered.
3. Percentage tasks
These are tasks that average other tasks, then convert the
scores to percentages of the total points.
Example: If task 10 is the percentage of tasks 5 and 6
(which each have 100 points), the program adds up the scores
from 5 and 6, then divides the scores by the total points of
5 and 6 (200 points). The score is then converted to a
percent by multiplying by 100. Hence, the scores range from
0 to 100 percent.
Like averaged tasks, any tasks that have not yet been
entered are not used in the conversions, so the percentages
reported for the students are for the tasks that have
already had scores entered.
39
4. Highest tasks: Throwing out the lowest scores
Throwing out low tasks seems to be a popular phenomenon with
students. Unfortunately, it is a fairly tedious thing to do
for instructors. You can throw out the lowest of a set of
tasks in VAR Grade. In the "T" section of the Main Menu,
option "H" will allow you to define a task that will throw
out the lowest task(s) of a special task.
Example: You can throw out the lowest two out of ten tasks.
Highest tasks discard the lowest one or more scores of a
sum, average, or percentage tasks ("throw out the lowest of
several scores"). The special task that is used must have a
number lower than the highest task. This is a very common
grading option that is used in many classrooms.
For a highest task, the program will find the lowest scores
of a list of tasks and add up only the highest of those
scores. You need to tell the program how many tasks to
discard (the lowest 1, the lowest 5, etc.). Scores that are
unentered are discarded first, then the lowest scores that
have been entered are discarded.
5. Weighted tasks
You can define a task as the sum of other tasks, each times
a weight. For example, you can define task 20 as the sum of
task 10 with a weight of 0.2, task 11 with a weight of 0.3,
and task 12 with a weight of 0.5. This will give "true"
weighting of tasks. Unentered tasks are given a score of 0
for the weighting.
6. Final weighted tasks
You can define a task as the sum of other tasks that are
weighted such that the final percentage is what you specify
as the weight. This differs from weighted tasks because the
weights in the final weighted tasks are the relative worth
you want each task to be in the total score while the
weighted task weights are the amounts to multiply the scores
for each exam.
Example: If you have three exams in your class, each worth
100 points, and want to weight them 30%, 30%, and 40%, you
can define task 4 as the final weight of task 1 with a final
weight of 30, task 2 with a final weight of 30, and task 3
with a final weight of 40. Task 4 will have a total of 100
points.
40
Defining Tasks
NOTE: The total points of the Final weighted task will be
the sum of the weights that you give it. In the above
example, the total points of the final weight task will be
30 + 30 + 40 = 100.
The calculation for the final weights is done by taking the
weights you give for each task and dividing them by the
total points for each task. These numbers are then added up
and multiplied by 100. For the example above, the students
scores are calculated as:
100 * (((Task #1 score) * 30 / 100) + ((Task #2 score) *
30 / 100) + ((Task #3 score) * 40 / 100))
The parentheses denote calculations that are kept together.
In the above example, "*" means "multiplied by".
7. Final task
You can define a task as a final task. This task will keep
track of the letter grades assigned in the "G" option of the
Main Menu. These scores are only assigned in the "G"
option. If you define a second final task, that one will be
used to assign scores by the "G" option. In other words, in
the "G" option the grades are assigned to the most recently
defined final task.
Note: If there are other types of special tasks that you would
like to have the option of using, send a note to us and explain
how this type of task would be calculated. We will try to
accommodate you.
C. Scaling Tasks
In the "G" option of the Main Menu, there is an option that
lets you add any number of points to a regular task, or
multiply the scores of any regular task by a number. Since
the primary purpose of scaling scores is to adjust the scores
before giving final grades, further details are given in
Chapter XI, Assigning and Printing the Final Grades.
D. Memory Limitations
Each task that is defined takes up space. In cases where
memory is limited, you may find that you cannot define a new
task. You may need to delete an old task to be able to add a
new one. A second option to increase your memory is by
removing any TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs like
"Sidekick" (TM Borland International) from memory BEFORE
running the program. A third option is to tell VAR Grade to
use less memory for overlays (See Chapter V, Section B3,
41
above). Version 4.0 of VAR Grade uses very little memory per
student, so, for example, classes of 30 students with 30 tasks
or of 90 students and 10 tasks would take up less than 15K of
memory over and above that used by the program. If you are
having memory problems, contact us at the address below for
possible solutions.
E. Manipulating Tasks
Tasks can easily be moved, copied, removed, and so forth.
1. Copying tasks
Tasks may by copied to new tasks that have higher task
numbers. To do this, go the "T" option of the Main Menu,
then press "C".
The definition of the task is copied exactly, even if the
task is a special task. The students scores are copied as
well. You will be asked for a new name for the task,
however.
Example: If the task to be copied is a number task, the new
task will have the same total points and student scores as
the first task.
Example: If the task to be copied is defined as the
percentage of tasks 1 through 3, the new task will also be
defined as the percentage of tasks 1 through 3.
2. Transferring tasks
When tasks are transferred, the student scores are
transferred but the exam definition is not. The task to
transfer to is defined as a number or letter task, depending
upon the definition of the task to be transferred. The
student scores are copied from the first task to the second.
3. Moving tasks
You can move one or more tasks. To move one task, press "M"
on the Task Type Menu. To move a group of several
consecutive tasks, press "G". When a task is moved, the
task is renumbered, and all the special tasks that use that
task are redefined to refer to the new number, as well.
When you move a group of tasks, you are asked for the first
and last numbers of the tasks to move. All the tasks
between and including those two numbers are moved. Student
scores, of course, move along with the task.
42
Defining Tasks
4. Clearing student scores
To redefine all student scores for a task as unentered, use
the "K" option on the Task Type Menu. The task remains
defined the same way as previously. You can clear only
regular tasks, as the others are recalculated each time
scores are entered into the class.
5. Show task definition
To help you remember how you have defined tasks, the "V"
option on the Task Type Menu will list the current
definition of the task.
6. Removing tasks
You can remove one or more tasks from the class. The "R"
option on the Task Type Menu asks you for a list of all the
tasks to remove. After you specify the tasks to be removed,
the program will ask you if you really want to remove them.
If you say "D" (delete), the task and the student scores
will be deleted from the class. Using the option with the
<F1> key to select all tasks will start the class over for
you. If you have the same students from one grading period
to the next, removing all the tasks will start the class
over for you, while keeping the students in the class.
F. Examples of Task Definitions
Example #1: I gave three tests. The first was worth 100
points, the second was worth 130 points, and the third was
worth 211 points. I want the exams to be worth 25%, 25%, and
50%, respectively. Solution: Define the tests as Tasks 1
through 3, all number tasks. Define task 4 as a Final Weight
Task. For task 4, make task 1 have a weight of 25, task 2 have
a weight of 25, and task 3 have a weight of 50. Task 4 will be
worth 100 points.
Example #2: For each test, I give two versions to my students.
Half the students take one version, half the other. I want to
keep track of each version separately, yet calculate the final
averages in the semester for the students in my class.
Solution: For each test, define three tasks. The first two are
the two versions of the tests. The third one is an Average
Task, which averages the first two tasks. The third task will
be the average of one task that has an entered score and one
that is unentered, hence equivalent to the entered score (see
the definition of Average Tasks, above).
43
Example #3: I give a homework assignment, then give students
extra credit for turning it in early. At the end of the
semester, I discard the lowest homework assignment. However, I
don't want the extra credit discarded, just the lowest
homework. Solution: When the homework is graded, define the
homework task, the extra credit task, and a third task, the sum
of the homework and extra credit. When you discard the lowest
homework assignment, use the third task in the definition, not
the first two tasks.
Example #4: I want to distinguish between unentered grades and
excused grades. How do I do it? Solution: The program keeps
track of the lowest allowed score. When the program is first
run, the lowest allowed score is 0. You can, however, enter
scores less than 0. You can always enter scores down to -
1,000,000. NOTE: You can tell the program the lowest score to
use for statistics in the "G" option on the Main Menu, then "F"
for fewest. The program, when calculating statistics, assumes
that scores less than the fewest allowed points are unentered
scores. The scores you entered, however, are displayed
correctly (as scores less than the fewest allowed) when
printing or entering scores. Hence, if you enter a -1, it will
be ignored for the plots, etc., but written as a -1 when you
print the scores.
Example #5: I want to assign grades to students halfway through
the semester. I then want to assign final grades at the end of
the semester. Solution: Define a Final Task at the half way
point. Then assign grades in the "G" option of the Main Menu.
After you have assigned the grades, define a new Final Task.
The next time you assign grades to a Final Task, the new final
task will get the new grades, and the first Final Task will
also remain.
Example #6: I defined a number task as having 100 points. I
entered grades, then decided to redefine it as having 110
points. Yet, I do not want to lose the previously entered
grades. Solution: When you redefine a task, the program asks
whether to delete any previous grades. If you say no, the
grades will not be changed. The only exception is if you
decrease the number of points, and a student has more than that
number. The student score will be decreased to the new maximum
points for the task.
44
VIII. ENTERING GRADES
Grades can be entered into the program in either of two
ways. Either the whole class can be listed for a list of tasks,
the "D" option of the Main Menu, or every grade for an individual
student can be listed, the "I" option on the Main Menu.
A. Entering Data for the Whole Class
The "D" option of the Main Menu lets you enter task data for
all students in the class.
1. Moving around the screen
Students, IDs, sections, and tasks can be listed on the
screen. To enter scores, the tasks must have already been
defined in the "T" option on the Main Menu. Only number,
letter, and extra credit tasks can have scores entered. The
others are calculated by VAR Grade.
To change which data is listed on the screen, use the key
<AltC>. You will be asked (a) if you want to list the
students by name, ID, or both; if you pick both, there will
be one column for each on the screen. (b) Next, if there is
more than one section of students in the class, you will be
asked if you want the sections to be listed. (c) Next, you
will be asked if student notes should be listed. (d)
Finally, you can pick which tasks are listed on the screen.
The options you select are saved by the program, so that the
next time you use the program, the same list is shown. Any
time you define a regular task, it will be added to the end
of the list of tasks. Only the first characters of the task
name (how many depends upon the total points for the task),
as well as its number, are listed at the top of the columns,
while the student names, and/or IDs, notes, and sections are
listed on the left.
A cell is a piece of data. It can be a task score, a name,
etc. To move between cells, use the cursor keys. The
cursor keys are the ones on the keypad, including the arrows
and the home, end, etc. keys. If you "use" cursor keys,
then use <Ctrl>-cursor keys to move between cells.
Otherwise, use the left, right, etc. keys to move between
the cells. You can change between "using" and not using
cursor keys for editing on the "Z" option of the Main Menu
(See Chapter IV, Section H, above). If you move past the
right end of the screen, the tasks are scrolled to the left.
The student names (or IDs), however, always stay listed on
the screen. If there too many students to fit on one
45
screen, the list will scroll up as you move down the screen.
The top of the screen lists some special keys. They are:
<AltB> Move to the beginning, left hand column.
<AltE> Move to the end column, that furthest right.
<AltI> Insert a new student before the student where the
cursor is. If the cursor is at the end of the
line, insert the new student after the current
one.
<AltD> Delete the student where the cursor is. This
immediately deletes the student.
<AltC> Change columns (discussed above).
<AltS> Save the data to memory. It is not saved to disk.
To do that, use the "S" option on the Main Menu.
<AltU> Restore (undo) the data in that cell. This works
only if you have not left the cell.
<F10> Delete the data in that cell.
2. Enter the data
You can use the cursor keys to move around the class and
screen. Unentered scores are left blank. You can enter the
new scores in the appropriate places. To keep the same
score, type only a <Rtn> or use the cursor keys to move to
the next cell.
To enter a new number score, put in a new number between the
minimum allowed points and the total allowed points of that
task. Other numbers are rejected. The minimum allowed
points are -1,000,000, while the maximum for any task is
1,000,000. You can use decimal points in number scores. To
enter a zero, you must type a "0". Cells for tasks that are
left blank revert to unentered scores.
If you are entering letter grades, only letters that are in
the names of the grades are allowed (e.g., for grades from A
to F, only the letters A, B, C, D, and F are allowed).
Press <Esc> or <AltS> to stop entering scores. With <Esc>,
the data in the current cell is discarded and you can quit
without saving any of the changes (except deleting students
by the <AltD> key), while <AltS> automatically saves it to
memory, but not to the disk. You can also alter the student
name, ID, and section numbers. To delete a student, delete
the name (e.g., with <F10>), or use <AltD>.
3. Hints
(a) It is helpful to give the tasks names. The names can be
up to 20 characters long. You can enter scores into any
defined task whether or not the task name exists.
However, names will help you make sure you are entering
scores into the correct task. When entering data for the
46
Entering Grades
whole class, only the beginning of the task names is
listed.
(b) VAR Grade can be used to add up points on any task. To
use VAR Grade to add up scores for questions on a test,
for example, you can define Task 20 as question 1, Task 21
as question 2, etc, in the "T" option on the Main Menu.
Then, define Task 22 as the Sum of Tasks 20 and 21.
Voila! You can then use the program to add up the points
on questions 1 and 2 of the task. You could then also use
VAR Grade to do statistics on each individual question.
If you have a large number of questions on the task, this
could get a little tedious, as you need to define each
question and enter the grades for each task.
B. Entering Individual Student Data
The "I" option of the Main Menu lets you enter task data for
all tasks of individual students. The program will list all
the number, letter, and extra credit tasks for one student.
Use the cursor keys to move around the screen. You can alter
any of the tasks, as well as the student names, IDs, or
sections. Unentered scores are left blank. To delete a score,
make the cell blank (e.g., with the <F10> key). To keep the
same score, type only a <Rtn> or use the cursor keys to move to
the next cell. To enter a new score, put in a new number
between the fewest allowed points and the total allowed points.
To enter scores less than zero, you need to change the fewest
allowed points in the "G" option on the Main Menu. The minimum
allowed points are -1,000,000, while the maximum points are
1,000,000. To enter a zero, you must type a "0". Press <Esc>
or <AltS> to stop entering scores. With <Esc>, you can quit
without saving the changes, while <AltS> automatically records
the changes. You can also alter the student names, IDs, and
section numbers. To delete a student, delete the name (e.g.,
with <F10>). The top of the screen lists some special keys.
They are:
<AltB> Move to the first student in the class.
<AltL> Move to the last student in the class.
<AltP> Move to the previous student.
<AltN> Move to the next student.
<AltI> Insert a new student before the student where the
cursor is. If the cursor is at the end of the line,
insert the new student after the current one.
<AltD> Delete the student where the cursor is. This takes
immediate effect.
<AltF> Find a student. You will pick from a list of all the
students in the class.
<AltS> Save the data to memory. It is not saved to disk. To
do that, use the "S" option on the Main Menu.
47
C. Saving Entered Data to Disk
It is strongly recommended that you save the data you have just
entered as soon as possible after entering it. Although the
program won't let you exit without saving changes, in case of
power failures or computer failure, you will have a copy on
disk of your new data. You save entered data in the "S" option
on the Main Menu. You will be asked for the filename to save
the data to. The current filename is listed on the line, and
just pressing <Rtn> will do the trick. If you want to change
the name, change it, then press <Rtn>. If you change the name,
further updates will be made to the new name.
WARNING: When you "save" data in the "D" or "I" options of the
program, you are saving it to memory, not to a disk file.
NOTE: The file that contains your student data is normally
made a "read-only" file. This means that you cannot delete it
with the DOS del or erase commands. You can tell the program
to write your files "read-only", as "hidden" (the DOS dir
command will not even list the file), or "normal". Normal
files can be deleted in DOS. The program also makes backup
files "normal", hence they can easily be deleted. Details on
how to change the way the program saves the data are in Chapter
V, Starting the Program.
It is also recommended that you keep two copies of your class
data on disk. To encourage this practice, another option on
the Main Menu, "B" (backup), will write the class to another
directory. The program will suggest writing the file to either
drive A or B, so that the data will be on floppy disks. If you
are using drive A for your class, the program will suggest
drive B, otherwise it will suggest writing to drive A. You
can, of course, pick any other drive or directory.
48
IX. ATTENDANCE
Attendance dates can be defined and attendance entered for
up to 240 different days. The attendance is entered by a whole
class, or by individual students in a manner analogous to those
for entering data for tasks. Attendance is found in the "A"
option of the Main Menu.
A. Defining Attendance Days
You define attendance days in the "D" option of the Attendance
Menu. There are two methods by which to define a new
attendance day. First, to choose the next undefined day, press
<F1>. Second, you can type in any number (from 1 to 240) as
the day you want to define.
In either case, you need to give the day a name or date. In
fact, it is required that you enter a name or date before the
attendance is defined. To make it easy to enter dates, the
function keys <F3> through <F8> can be used to automatically
enter the dates. The keys are defined as the following:
<F3> The date two days ago.
<F4> The date yesterday.
<F5> The date today.
<F6> The date tomorrow.
<F7> The date in two days.
<F8> The date any number of days from todays date, up to
365 days away. You need to enter the days. Example:
To enter the date one week earlier, enter a -7.
The dates that are entered are in whatever format you have
chosen. These can be changed in the "Z" option on the Main
Menu. With this option you can change how dates will be
printed on documents as well as how they are entered in
attendance.
B. Changing Defaults
By default, when attendance days are added, the student
attendance is made "Present". There are six categories of
attendance: Present, Excused, Unexcused, Late, Not Entered, and
Other. These have the characters " ", "E", "U", "L", "_", and
"O", respectively. The default student attendance and the
characters associated with them can be altered on the "A"
(Attendance) option of the Main Menu, then "Z".
The screen will list the current values. The default new
student attendance will be highlighted or, if you have a
monochrome monitor, underlined (unless you've changed the
49
default colors). Use the cursor keys (or <Ctrl>-cursor keys)
to move around the menu. To select a new default student
attendance, press <Rtn>. The new value will now be
highlighted. To change the letters for the different types of
attendance, pick the new key. To simplify matters, any
lowercase letters will be converted to uppercase letters. The
allowed keys are the uppercase letters and the characters ".",
"_", "-", and " ".
C. Entering Class Attendance
To enter attendance for all students in your class, use the "C"
option of the Attendance Menu. This option works like the "D"
option of the Main Menu for entering task data.
1. Choose the dates
Students and days will be listed on the screen. Just as in
entering task scores, to change the columns, use the key
<AltC>. You can then pick which days to list on the screen,
as well as whether to list the names, IDs, and sections.
See Chapter VIII, Section A1 for more details. The most
recently defined list of names and days are saved by the
program. If you define new attendance days, they will
automatically be added to the end of the list of days to
display. The top of the screen lists valid keys and key
codes for the attendance. Next the days are listed by name
and number. The names are listed by the first several
letters of the date. Student names and/or IDs are on the
left of each row. If you have numerous days you want
displayed, not all of them may fit on the screen at once.
If you move to the right, more may be displayed. The names
or IDs in the leftmost column are always displayed.
2. Enter the data
You can use the cursor or <Ctrl>-cursor keys to move around
the class and screen. The valid keys are listed at the top
of the screen. Only those keys will be accepted. To delete
a student, delete the name (e.g., with <F10>), or use
<AltD>. To add a new student, type <AltI>. When quitting
this section, any changes made to the screen are recorded by
the program by <AltS>, or possibly by exiting with <Esc>.
50
Attendance
D. Entering Individual Student Attendance
To change attendance for just one student, use the "I"
option of the Attendance Menu. The program will list all of
the currently defined attendance days for a student. You
can alter the attendance for any day, as well as the student
name, ID, or section. To keep the same attendance, type a
<Rtn> or use the cursor keys to move to another day. To
enter a new attendance value, put in a new letter (from the
list near the top of the screen). Press <Esc> to erase the
data or <AltS> to save it when finished. To delete a
student, delete the name (e.g., with <F10>), or use <AltD>.
To add a new student, type <AltI>. For more details, see
Chapter VIII, Section B.
51
X. ANALYZING THE GRADES
Grades can be analyzed a variety of ways. These are listed
in the sections below. Furthermore, all the statistics and plots
listed below can be printed on a printer or sent to a disk file.
Chapter XI, Printing the Grades, explains the printing. The
analyses in this chapter are generally from the "G" and "P"
options of the Main Menu.
A. Default Values for Analysis
After you pick several of the options listed below, a screen
will appear that asks how you want to proceed. Several options
will be listed, including: (a) which printer to use; (b) what
sections to use; (c) whether to print to the screen or to a
printer or disk file; (d) whether to temporarily drop students
from the statistical analysis. Picking a printer and deciding
where the data should be displayed are discussed in Chapter XI,
Assigning and Printing the Grades. The others are discussed
here.
1. Sections
If you have only one section of students in the class, this
option is not displayed. Otherwise, the most recently
selected sections will be listed. Each time you enter the
program, the program will default to using all of the
current sections of the class. If you change the list of
sections to use, this new list will become the default
sections for all parts of the program during the current
session with the program. If you choose to use no sections,
an error message will result and you will exit back to the
Main Menu as there are no usable data.
2. Temporarily dropping students
You can tell the program to temporarily drop students from
the calculations for statistics and/or plots. This option
can be used for students that have incomplete data. The
number of students currently ignored are shown on the Print
Menu screen. These students are ignored only for
statistical purposes. You can still enter data, write
scores to printers, etc., unless statistical measures are
needed (e.g., all plots).
When you need to increase or decrease the numbers of
students to ignore, two lists of students will be shown: (1)
all the students in the class, and, (2) those students who
are temporarily dropped from the statistics calculations.
52
Analyzing the Grades
You drop students by using either the cursor keys or by
typing in the student names. The <F3> key can be used to
switch between adding and decreasing the number of students
to be ignored. These students will be ignored for any
further statistics during the current session with the
program or until they are no longer ignored in this part of
the program.
3. Font selection
You can change fonts from the Plot Menu. Font files must
end in "CHR". You will be asked for the directory for the
font files. The program will suggest "*.CHR". This will
list all the font files in the DOS PATH. You can, however,
change which drive to search by replacing *.CHR with, for
example: "A:*.CHR". This will cause the program to search
drive A for the font files. WARNING: Some fonts will not
look good on some video monitors.
NOTE: The registered version of the program has more fonts
available than the shareware version.
4. 2D versus 3D plots
Most plots can be done either with bars that look two
dimensional (2D), or with bars that look three dimensional
(3D). The plots are otherwise the same.
B. Plotting the Scores of a Class
By selecting the "P" (plot) option on the Main Menu, the scores
for any of the tasks can be plotted. The program lists the
tasks and asks for a task to be plotted. On the Plot Menu, "P"
will plot the scores, and "T" will give the same plot with 3-D
bars. Plotting the scores follows the sequence below.
1. Choose a task
You will see a list of all the tasks. To see any that are
not listed on the screen, use the cursor or <Ctrl>-cursor
keys. If you pick task zero or <Esc>, the program will exit
this section without plotting an task. Otherwise, the task
will be plotted.
2. Score ranges
If you grade with numbers, you must specify the range of
scores to plot (the high and low scores). The program will
ask for these numbers. If you just type <Rtn> when asked
for the high and/or low scores, the program will pick the
highest or lowest score in the class. If there are no
students in the range of scores you have chosen, an error
message will result and no scores will be plotted.
53
By picking different ranges of scores, you can zoom in on
various groups of students to see how they have done, rather
than seeing scores only for the entire class. One of the
most useful features of picking the low range is to prevent
a very low score from skewing the plot.
Student scores not yet entered or lower than the fewest
allowed points are not used for the plots.
3. Defaults
As discussed above, after picking the task and a range of
scores, you can pick which sections of students to use and
where to print the scores. See Part A of this chapter for
more details.
4. Plotting the scores
The plot separates the scores into up to 25 categories of
scores. It also shows the mean, median, and standard
deviation of the scores for the task (see the section on
"Calculating Statistics" below for a more complete
explanation of what these statistics mean). It plots the
numbers of students with the various scores. The statistics
calculated are only for those scores in the range of scores
you choose. If you vary the high or low range of the scores
used, these statistical measures will change. On the plot,
the mean and median are shown with arrows. At one standard
deviation above and below the mean are additional arrows
(listed as "+1", "-1"). If the standard deviations fall
outside the range of scores plotted, they may not be
displayed.
5. Listing the scores
After the plot is shown, you will be asked if you want to
see the list of students' scores. If you decide to see
them, the program will list the students scores in two
columns: (a) class order (dependent upon your method of
sorting students) and (b) by scores on that task, from high
to low. The rank order of the students is also printed, if
you choose that option on the Print Menu (the program
defaults to printing the ranks).
C. Plotting the Scores of an Individual
You can follow how a student is doing in your class by plotting
the scores for that student on a set of tasks. By selecting on
the Plot Menu the "I" for 2D bars, or "B" for 3D bars, you can
plot trends for scores of any of the class tasks for an
individual student.
54
Analyzing the Grades
1. Picking the tasks
The program will list the tasks and asks you to pick which
ones to plot. You have the option of plotting (a) the
percentages of each task, (b) the sums (totals) of each
task, (c) the T-scores, or (d) the standard deviations from
the mean for each task.
2. Listing the scores
The program will then plot the task scores and calculate the
statistics. The program assumes that the student trend is a
straight line: either the scores increase or decrease. Note
that this is frequently not the case, hence, these results
should be interpreted with caution. The program then
calculates the best-fitting line for that trend, and plots
it on the graph. The correlation coefficient for the tasks,
and the mean, median and standard deviations are also
calculated. These all may or may not be useful for
understanding how a student is doing in the class. The
statistics are listed on the screen after the graph is
plotted. If you choose more tasks than fits on one screen,
you will need to press a key to proceed through all the
tasks.
D. Calculating Statistics
You can calculate statistics without having to plot the scores.
Rather than plotting each task to calculate the mean, median,
and standard deviation, you can pick the "G" (grade) option on
the Main Menu, then pick the "M" option on the Grading Menu.
You can then see these statistics for any combination of tasks.
To calculate statistics, you need to choose which tasks to
calculate statistics, and pick which sections to use. The data
will be calculated only for those sections you have told the
program to use. This allows comparisons between different
sections or combinations of sections. Statistics will not be
calculated if a task has not been defined or if the task has
less than the fewest allowed points.
The median is the score for the person exactly in the middle of
the class, i.e., exactly half the scores are above that number
and half are below that number. The mean is the number
calculated by adding up all the student scores and dividing by
the number of students in the class. If you have a "normal" or
"bell-shaped" distribution of scores, the mean and median
should be the same number. In practice they are usually
different. The standard deviation is a measure of how the
scores are dispersed. The larger the standard deviation, the
greater the range in the scores. A score that is equal to the
mean plus the standard deviation (called "one standard
deviation above the mean") is approximately in the top 16% of
the scores. For a normal distribution, two thirds of the
scores should be within one standard deviation of the mean.
55
How many standard deviations away from the mean a student has
scored, therefore, is a measure of how the student did on the
task in relation to everybody else. You can then compare
scores between tests by comparing the deviations from the means
for each student.
E. Correlating Different Tasks
By selecting the "C" or "3" options on the Plot Menu, you can
plot the scores for any of the tasks against the scores for any
of the other tasks. This helps you to see if there were any
problems on one or both of those tasks. If the tasks are
measuring different things, the scores will be widely
scattered. This may be an indication that one or both of the
tasks did not measure what you hoped it would. If the tasks
are measuring similar abilities, the scores will tend to
cluster near the diagonal.
1. 2D or 3D plots
In contrast to the other plots, the two different plots for
correlations look quite different. In the 2D plot, the
scores are shown as x's. If two or more x's are on the same
place, the x becomes thicker. For the 3D plot, 3D bars are
plotted. The more students on a point, the higher the bars.
To make the plot easier to interpret, it is slightly skewed.
This makes it easier to tell the difference between tall
bars and bars at different points on the graph.
2. Choose the tasks
You must choose the tasks to plot on each of the axes. Any
task can be plotted against any other task. To help in your
selection, the program lists the tasks. If you pick task
zero for either axis, the program will give an error message
and ask again. To exit this section without plotting, type
an <Esc>.
3. Pick a range of scores for each task
If you grade with number grades, for each task that you have
picked, you must pick the high and low scores to plot. If
you just type <Rtn>, the program will pick the highest or
lowest score in the class (whichever is appropriate). If no
students are in the ranges of scores that you pick, no
scores will be plotted and an error message will result.
4. Defaults
As discussed above, after picking the task and range of
scores, you can pick the sections, decide whether to ignore
students, and change how to print the scores. See Part A of
this chapter (above).
56
Analyzing the Grades
5. Correlation plot
The plot shows a 20 X 20 matrix of the distribution of the
scores. The correlation coefficient is calculated and
shown. The coefficient ranges from 1.0 (the scores on the
X-axis predict exactly the scores on the Y-axis) to 0.0 (the
scores on the two axes are completely random with respect to
each other) to -1.0 (the low scores on the X-axis predict
high scores on the Y-axis, and vice versa). The closer the
coefficient is to 1.0, the more closely the two tasks
measured the same parameters or abilities (and hence the
students scored more nearly the same on both the tasks). If
the correlation coefficient is close to 0 or below it, then
students who did well on one task did poorly on the other.
If you decide that this result indicates a flaw in one or
both of the test, the program will allow you to delete one
or both tasks. Note: The 3D plot is tilted slightly. This
makes it easier to distinguish the different scores. For
the 2D plot, two or more scores on the same point will show
up as a thicker "x", while on the 3D plot, the bars will get
higher and higher with each score.
F. Statistical Plots of the Classes
The last type of plot, the "S" option on the Plot Menu, shows
plots of the mean, median, and standard deviations for one or
more tasks. Furthermore, the "1" option on the Plot Menu will
show how an individual student scored on those tasks compared
with the entire class.
1. Pick the tasks
The program lists the tasks and asks for which ones you wish
to plot. You can choose to plot from one to forty tasks.
If you want to plot an individual student against the
scores, you will also be asked for a student record to plot.
2. Plotting the statistics
The program will show the range of scores as bars. The mean
is a wide line all the way horizontally across the bar. The
median is a horizontal bar halfway across the bar, with some
vertical lines in it. The standard deviation is shown as
the vertical line, extending one standard deviation above
and below the mean. At one standard deviation above and
below the mean are horizontal lines extending halfway across
the bar. If you are plotting the scores of a student as
well, that student's scores are shown as arrows. The tip of
the arrow is the position of the student's score. If you
plot tasks that have a wide range of scores, some or all of
these measures may end up compressed. The range of scores
that are plotted are from the lowest to the highest obtained
scores. The Y axis may extend down to 0 points, however,
even if no scores are that low. The widths of the bars
57
changes depending upon how many tasks are plotted; the more
tasks, the narrower the bars. The X-axis shows the numbers
of the tasks that were plotted.
G. Scaling the Tasks
If you grade using number grades, you can scale the regular
tasks differently. Pick the "G" (grade) option of the Main
Menu, then the "S" (scale) option in the Grading Menu. You may
add any number of points to an task, or multiply the task by
any positive number. The total points for the task, after the
scaling, must be less than or equal to one million and greater
than or equal to the lowest allowed score. Point totals less
than the allowed scores are summed as the lowest allowed score,
while scores greater than the total task points are set at the
total points. Students with scores that have not been entered
are not changed (the score is still undefined). This part of
the program allows you to conveniently change point totals for
any task. It also allows you to add points to one section and
not to others, as the scaling occurs only for those sections
you choose. You cannot scale special tasks. The total points
for the task, after scaling, will not change. If desired, you
can readjust the total points manually in the "T" section of
the Main Menu either before or after scaling the task.
H. Setting the Fewest Allowed Points.
When the program starts, the fewest points that a student can
have on a task is 0 points. If you want to enter scores less
than 0, you can set the fewest allowed points to be less than
zero. On the "G" option of the Main Menu, the "F" option
allows this. You can reset the number to as few as -1,000,000
points. Even though the fewest allowed points may be 0 (or any
other number), you can still put in scores less than the fewest
allowed points. Students with scores less than the fewest
allowed points will be ignored for statistical tests, and are
considered to be equivalent to unentered scores. The
difference from unentered scores is that the numbers you enter
will be printed if you print the scores, whereas unentered
scores will be blank.
I. Assigning Standard Deviations and T-Scores
Standard deviations and T-scores tell you how a student did in
relation to the other students in the class. You can calculate
the standard deviations and/or T-scores of a task for the
class, and assign these numbers to a number task. Go to the
"G" option on the Main Menu. On the Grading Menu, press "V"
for standard deviations, or "T" for T-scores.
You will be asked which task to use for the calculations, and
to which task to assign the new scores. WARNING: The new task
will be redefined as a number task. If you assign standard
deviations and T-scores, approximately half of the scores will
58
Analyzing the Grades
be below zero. Make sure that you change the fewest allowed
points to a number below the lowest standard deviation or T-
score (see Section H, above).
J. Adjusting the Statistics of a Task
In unusual circumstances, you may want to manually adjust the
mean, median, and standard deviation of a task. The "A" option
on the Grading Menu lets you do this. The "D" option lets you
remove those adjustments. One reason you might want to do this
is to "freeze" the current numbers. Make-up exams or late
homework assignments will continually change the statistics on
a task. Adjusting the statistics after the grades have been
assigned on a task to the current value will stop these values
from changing.
To adjust the statistics, you need to pick the task to use.
The current values are then displayed. You can change one or
more of these values to any numbers you want. These numbers
are then used by all the other parts of the program that
calculate these values. To return to the true values, use the
"D" option on the Grading Menu.
K. Changing the Grading Names
VAR Grade can use just about any grading system you want. The
program defaults to the grading system commonly used in the
United States: A through F, with + and - scores. However, you
can define any grading system that has up to 12 grades (plus a
"unentered" or "incomplete" grade). Each grade can have a name
of up to two characters long. The grading system can have the
highest grade as the highest score, or the highest grade as
having the lowest score. Furthermore, you can assign point
totals to the grades.
To change the grading system, go to the "G" option on the Main
Menu. Choose the "N" option on the Grading Menu. Next, you
will be asked whether to use one of a few pre-defined grading
systems, or to define your own system.
If you define your own grading system, you will be asked to
enter the grade names, then the point totals for the grades.
These point totals are the values for the grades, not the
scores that are needed to obtain the grade (see Section L to do
this). Grade names and point totals can be changed at any
time. The program converts all letter grades to numbers and
stores the numbers.
WARNING: If you change the grading system after assigning
letter grades, the new numbers may translate into a different
grade than you want.
59
L. Picking Automatic Grade Cutoffs
If you always use the same grading system, you may want to set
the grading system in the "C" option of the Grading Menu. For
instance, you can tell the program that 90% is an A, 80% is a
B, etc. Alternatively, you can tell the program that 90 points
is an A, 80 points a B, etc. When you assign grades, VAR Grade
will use these values, either as percentages or points, as the
point system to use when assigning grades. You can change the
grading system at any time. To remove the cutoff points needed
for various grades assigned in the "C" option, use the "R"
(remove) option of the Grading Menu. The program will again
ask you for the lowest scores for each grade every time you
assign grades in the "G" option of the Main Menu.
60
XI. ASSIGNING AND PRINTING THE GRADES AND ATTENDANCE
You can print out the grades and attendance of a class by three
methods:
1. Plot the scores of a task. The program will list the
student scores for that task in numerical order and in
sorted order (see Chapter X, Analyzing the Grades).
2. Print grades or attendance for any combination of tasks and
sections or names with the "W" (write) option on the Main
Menu--discussed below.
3. Assign and print the grades with the "G" (grade) option on
the Main Menu. This method is also discussed below.
A. Default Values for Analysis
After picking several of the options listed below, a menu will
appear that asks how you want to proceed. This is the Print
Menu. Listed on the menu will be several options, including:
(a) which printer to use; (b) what sections to use; (c) whether
to print to the screen or to a printer or disk file. The
options listed will vary in different parts of the program.
Some of the options are listed above, in Chapter X, Analyzing
the Grades.
1. Choosing a printer
When you install the program, you are asked which printer
you will be using. If you want to change which printer will
be used or how to print (single or double spacing; pica or
elite; etc.), press "Q" on the Print Menu to get to the
Printer Menu. The Printer Menu can also be reached in the
"Z" option of the Main Menu.
(a) Installation of a printer
To install a new printer, press "P" on the Printer Menu.
The program, INSTALLP must be on a disk or directory that
the program can find, and there must be enough memory to
run the program INSTALLP. It will list all the currently
supported printers. Use the cursor keys to locate the
printer(s) that you wish to install. When you find each
one, press the space bar. After you have picked up to 5
different printers, press the <F10> key to install the
printers. To quit before installing the printers, press
<F3>. This will install the Graphics printer codes. If
yours is not listed, your printer manual should list the
printer(s) that it emulates. Note: The list of supported
printers will be continually updated. If yours is not
61
supported with the version that you have, an update may be
available that will explicitly support your printer.
When you install the printers, the program will change the
file GRADE.PDT. For many of the printers, the Line
printer codes will also be installed. For most, however,
you also need to tell the program which printer codes to
use. Pick the "L" option on the Printer Menu. Listed
will be several different printers that are frequently
emulated. Most printers emulate the Epson FX-80 printer.
If yours does, pick that. If not, it may emulate one of
the other printers listed below. Some printer
manufacturers and the printers they usually emulate is
listed below. If your printer is not listed, or if you
want to change the printer codes for your printer, use the
"U" option on the Printer Menu to put in the printer
codes.
Line Printer Def. Printers Supported
Epson FX-80 Most Epson printers, including the
EX, FX, MX, and RX series. Also,
many printers from Brother,
Citizen, and others.
IBM Graphics Printer IBM dot matrix, Okidata with IBM
emulation, Star Micronics, and
others.
HP Laser Jet HP LaserJet, Plus, Series II,
DeskJet, PaintJet, and most laser
printers.
NEC P-2200 Most NEC printers.
Okidata 92 Okidata 84, 92, 93, 192, 193, 292,
and others.
(b) Changing the line printer codes
To change the printer codes, press "U" on the Printer
Menu. Listed will be the current printer codes. To
change them, use the cursor keys to move to the code that
you want, then press the correct codes. Your printer
manual will list the codes needed to use pica, elite, etc.
printing. NOTE: Some of the keys work differently in this
part of the program, as you need to be able to enter any
possible printer code. To enter escape (#27), press the
<Esc> key. The backspace key will enter <CtrlH> (#8).
The enter or <Rtn> key will enter <CtrlM> (#13). To enter
codes below 32 or above 127, hold down the <Alt> key, then
use the keys on the numeric keypad to enter the number.
You can enter up to 10 characters for each of the codes.
To backspace (remove the previous character), use the <F2>
key. After you exit with <AltS>, the new codes will be in
effect. Pressing <AltE> will switch between listing the
codes as hex numbers or as text.
62
Printing the Grades
(c) Changing the graphic printer codes
If your printer is not supported, or if the printer codes
that are used by the program are not producing the results
that you want, the program BDE (Baby Driver Editor) can be
used to change the codes. BDE is available to registered
users, only.
(d) Printer errors
If there are problems with your printer (not turned on,
out of paper, etc.), the program will put out an error
message. Sometimes the error message may mistakenly state
that the error is a "disk" error instead of a printer
error. In either case, try to correct the error before
telling the program to continue. If the error is not
correctable, output to the printer will stop. In most
cases, the printing is just turned off.
(e) Changing installed printers
After you choose your printer, the choice is written to a
file called "GRADE.PRT". This file also contains the
various line printer codes, and is written to the current
directory. To change the printer, go to the Printer Menu,
then select the number of the printer you want to use. If
the printer is not listed, it is not installed, and must
be installed before it can be chosen.
If you have your classes each in different directories,
you can have each class set up to print differently. The
program searches for the GRADE.PRT file in the current
directory first, then searches for the file in the
directory where the program is located, then, if still
not found, searches for the file in a directory specified
by the DOS PATH command.
(f) Changing the printer ports
The program assumes that you are using the first parallel
printer port, called LPT1 (also called LST or PRN). To
change this, you can pick either of several parallel or
serial ports as the destination of the printing. No
checking is done for the port, so if the port you choose
does not exist, you will not be able to print data.
2. Print options
The "Z" option of the Printer Menu lets you change how the
page is output to a printer or disk file.
63
(a) Line Spacing
Single, double, and even greater spacing of lines can be
printed. Changes from single line spacing occur when
output is sent to a disk or the printer, never on the
screen. Also note that the plots are always single
spaced.
(b) Margins
You can set up the left, right, top, and bottom margins of
the pages. The left margin is the number of characters to
leave blank on the left side of the page. The right
margin is set indirectly: you specify the number of
characters on a line. If you decrease the number of
characters, the line is shorter, hence you have a larger
right margin. The header and footer set the lines at the
top and bottom of the page. The page numbers are written
in the footer, while the running head on the top right of
the page is written in the header. Setting either to 0
will prevent them from being written. You can also stop
page numbers from being written by telling the program to
stop printing page numbers. Lastly, you can specify the
number of lines on a page. A typical 8 1/2" by 11" page
in pica mode has 80 characters on a line and 66 lines.
Elite has 96 characters and 88 lines, while compressed has
136 characters and 110 lines.
This flexibility also can cause problems. If you have set
the number of characters to a very small number, you can
truncate some of the data sent to the printer. If only
the left part of the graph has been written, check the
margins that you have set to see if that is the problem.
If the program doesn't break the pages in the correct
place, try increasing or decreasing the lines on a page.
(c) Listing ranks
You can have VAR Grade print out the rank of each student
when listing the students in the class. This option can
be turned on or off in the Print Menu. Student ranks will
be listed by whatever sorting method you have chosen (see
Chapter VI, Section E, above). For example, if you have
sorted the class by student names, the ranks printed will
be the alphabetical order of the class. If you sort by
the score on an task, the ranks will be by the score on
that task. Note that if you sort the class without regard
to sections, then print them by sections, the numbers will
not necessarily be consecutive for each student in each
section.
64
Printing the Grades
(d) Printing Notes
You often enter notes that you do not want printed out.
VAR Grade, therefore, will print the notes only if you
tell it to. You can toggle (switch on and off) whether to
show the notes. If the toggle is on (the notes will be
shown), when data is printed, the notes will also be
printed. NOTE: When printing final grades from the "G"
option of the Main Menu, the notes may not all fit onto
the lines when printing both the student ID and names and
may be truncated.
To print out notes that you have entered into the student
records, you need to tell the program to "show" the notes.
Pressing "T" on the Write Data Menu will let you indicate
whether to show the notes. You can also indicate whether
to show the notes in the Print Menu that is always seen
before you print your data. For those parts of the
program where you can print notes, there is an option on
the Print Menu that lets you toggle whether to show the
notes.
3. Disk files
When you print files to disk, they are printed as ASCII
files. This means that you can then use a word processor to
alter them in any way that you want, or use the word
processor to print the files. If you pick the "D" (print to
disk) option, you will be asked the name of the file.
Pressing <Esc> or <Rtn> will cause the default disk file
listed to be written; typing "none" will turn off the
printing to a disk file. In case of a syntax error in the
file name, the program will ask for a new name. The program
checks to see whether there is enough space on your disk and
to see if a file with that name already exists. If there is
not enough space on the disk, the program will stop sending
files to the disk. If you are printing a graph or plot, the
program will write the plots to a file with the same
filename, but the extension (the part after the period),
will be changed. NOTE: The plots are not written in ASCII
letters, but will be written for whichever printer you
specify. These can be printed from disk to your printer by
typing "COPY file.ext PRN". Each type of plot has a
different letter in the extension (the first letter of the
suggested extension), with a number from 00 to 99 after it.
For example, printing a plot to a disk file for the class
GSAMPLE will produce a file "GSAMPLE.P00". If that file
already exists, it would be written to "GSAMPLE.P01", etc.
The disk file that you specify will contain a line in it
telling you the name of the file for the plot.
65
4. Class name
In addition, in the "Z" option of the Main Menu, there is
an option that will let you rename the class with up to 15
characters. This rename is for printing purposes only,
and will not change the file name of the class. When VAR
Grade prints data to a printer or disk file, it also
prints the name of the class. Renaming the class will
override the default name (which is the one used when
starting the program).
Example: The class is called "BIO" when you tell VAR
Grade to use it. The default name for printing would be
"BIO". You can change it to anything else, e.g. "Biology
100", for printing purposes, but the file name(s) will
still be BIO (plus the extensions ".PAR" and ".DAT").
B. Printing the Student Scores and Attendance
If you want to print out a list of the students and their task
scores, select the Main Menu choice "W" (write). This is the
Write Data Menu. You can print out all the task scores or
attendance for one student ("by name") or for whole sections of
students ("by section"); you can print a grid for entering
scores; or, you can export data in formats that can be read by
other programs.
1. By name
After you select this option, you will see a list of
students in the class. If there are more students than fit
on one screen, you can use the cursor keys to locate the
desired student. The highlighted name can be chosen by
typing <Rtn>. You can also pick a name by typing it in at
the prompt, but you must spell the name as the name appears
in the program (in upper and/or lower case letters). If you
type in the name, and there is more than one section of
students in the class, you must enter the section number for
the student (or <F1> to search for the section--note that
the program will find only the first occurrence of the
name). If you use attendance in your class, you also need
to choose whether you want to write attendance, tasks
scores, or task scores and a summary of attendance. The
program first lists the name of the student, the ID, the
section, and the date the data was printed (i.e., the
current date). It will then list all the defined tasks by
number and name as well as the scores for the student, the
total points for the task, and the percentage of the total
points for the student score. If you grade with letter
grades, the total points and percentages are not listed,
since they are meaningless. If no score was entered for the
student, it is listed as "not entered". For attendance, VAR
Grade will list all the dates and attendance. For the
attendance summary, a list of the totals for each attendance
66
Printing the Grades
category will be printed. If you list the scores to a
printer or to a disk file, VAR Grade will break the listing
into pages. You can change such things as margins, type
styles, etc. before you print the class from the Print Menu
(see above).
2. By section
If you select this option, you must pick the tasks or
attendance days to print, ending the input with a <Rtn>,
followed by a second <Rtn> (with no other characters) or "0"
<Rtn>. This tells the program that you are finished putting
in task or attendance numbers. NOTE: If there are too many
tasks or attendance days to print on one screen, the program
will print out as many as fits across the page for a whole
section, then more, etc., until all tasks and students have
been printed. After specifying what to print, you reach the
Print Menu. If the wrong section, printer, or other options
are listed, change them before specifying where to print the
data. If you are printing the student notes, they will be
printed after any tasks that you have chosen. We always
recommend that you print the scores on your printer
immediately after entering task scores, just in case there
is a computer or disk malfunction. If you print the scores
on your printer, using elite type and single spacing will
allow more scores to be printed per page than pica printing.
As mentioned above, you can set margins, page lengths,
characters per line, etc. from the Printer Menu. Although
you may have entered scores using several decimal places,
they may be printed using only one or even no places to the
right of the decimal, depending upon how many points the
task is worth. NOTE: The program keeps grades using 15
significant digits, but may not print that many. When
printed to the printer, page lengths are calculated and the
printing formatted accordingly. The date is also printed so
that you know when you last printed your class data.
3. Printing grids
For entering student data, it is often useful to list the
students with a blank grid. You can then use it to record
the grades. The grid can make it easier to enter the
student grades into the computer. The program will just
list all the students in the class and empty boxes (grids)
for entering student data.
C. Calculating and Printing Grades
To calculate and print grades on a task (or final grades) use
the "G" (grade) option on the Main Menu, then "G", "P", or "3"
on the Grading Menu.
67
1. Choose a task
First, pick which task to grade. The program lists all the
valid tasks. If there are more tasks than can be listed on
one screen, use the cursor keys to see more tasks. Task 0
or <Esc> is interpreted as no task (exit). Only non-letter
grades can be picked (the others already have the grades
assigned).
2. Defaults
As discussed above, after picking the task and range of
scores, you can pick the sections and how to print the
scores.
3. Plot and cutoffs
If you selected the "P" or "3" options on the Grading Menu,
all the scores for the sections specified will be plotted;
otherwise, the "G" option skips the plotting. You then must
select the LOW cutoffs for each grade (unless you have
already set the cutoffs in the "C" option of the Grading
Menu). Depending upon your grading system, up to 11 cutoffs
need to be entered. If you just press enter for a cutoff,
the program will select the same cutoff as the previous
cutoff (hence nobody will receive that particular grade, and
the totals for that grade will not be listed at the end of
the class). You can use <F2> to backup one or more grades.
4. Listing the grades
The program will list the total points (or averages) and
grades, by section, for the selected task. A table of
numbers of students with each grade and the cutoffs are then
listed. The program will ask whether these grades are
acceptable. If you choose no ("N"), the plot and cutoffs
will continue to be repeated, with new cutoffs, until you
say they are acceptable ("Y"). When the data is printed
out, the classname, section, task, and date are also
printed. If you have defined a task as a final task, the
program will save the grades for the students on that task.
Grades are always assigned to the most recently defined
final task. Otherwise, it does not store these grades and
cutoffs anywhere in the program. If you print notes, they
will be listed on the right hand side of the page. WARNING:
If you are printing with both names and IDs, the notes may
be truncated.
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Printing the Grades
D. Exporting Data
You can export data from a VAR Grade class in three different
formats. Other programs can then read the data. For all three
methods of export, you can specify whether to write names, IDs,
and sections, as well as any combination of tasks. If you want
student notes to be written, make sure that the you have you
have told the program to show the notes (i.e., set the toggle)
before you export the data.
1. Comma and quote file
A quote and comma file is an ASCII file where strings
(names) are enclosed in double quotes (""), while numbers
are not. Cells of data are separated by commas. Many
spreadsheets can import this type of file. Each cell get
imported into one cell in a spreadsheet. Each line in the
file ends up as one line in the spreadsheet.
2. Flat file
A flat file is an ASCII file where data is separated into
columns. The columns are separated by spaces. Many
spreadsheets can import data in this format.
3. Byte file
This type of file is not an ASCII file. It is included
either as a last resort, so you can write your own
converter, or to work with report card programs that may be
on the market. The names are written with 20 characters,
then the IDs with 15 characters, student notes with 20
characters, sections as 2-byte cardinal numbers, and tasks
as 2-byte letter grades for letter and final tasks or 8-byte
floating point numbers for all other tasks (1 sign bit, 11
exponent bits, and 52 bits for the significand). If
specified, the order is: name, ID, notes, section (written
if there is more than 1 section in the class, otherwise not
written), then the list of tasks, in the order you chose.
69
XII. OTHER PROGRAM FEATURES
A. Running Other Programs from VAR Grade
If necessary, you can use the "R" option on the Main Menu to
run other programs from VAR Grade. This feature was put into
the program to allow you to delete files or format disks
without exiting the program. These may be necessary if you run
out of disk space before writing data to a disk file. With
this option, however, you can run any program, if you have
enough memory. To remind you that you are still in VAR Grade,
the prompt will be preceded by a message: "To return to VAR
Grade, type EXIT." You should be warned that certain programs
may cause problems. The major problems can come from programs
that are memory resident or that will (inadvertently) stall
("hang") the computer. Because there is no reasonable way for
VAR Grade to prevent you from running these types of programs,
it is advised that you save your data before running programs
other than those of the DOS operating system (del, format, dir,
etc.).
B. Dates
You can redefine the method of writing the date. You can
define dates a variety of ways, including American, Japanese,
and European style dates. This can be found on the "Z" option
of the Main Menu. These dates are used for writing data. It
is also used in defining attendance days.
C. Video Displays
VAR Grade supports all standard displays. There are some
points below that may help you.
1. Monochrome displays
Some monochrome display adapters tell programs that they are
color boards. This causes the program to write data to the
screen that looks funny or unreadable. If you have a
monochrome board and the opening screen has a lot of
underlined characters, there are two things you can do to
improve the display.
(a) Start the program with a switch
Instead of starting the program with "GRADE", start it
with "GRADE/B". The /B is a switch that tells the program
that you have a black and white display. This has to be
done each time you run the program.
70
Other Program Features
(b) Set a DOS environment variable
Rather than typing /B all the time, you can set a DOS
variable, instead. Before running the program, type "SET
VMON=BW;". This tells the program that you have a black
and white display. The best thing would be for you to set
this variable in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file that DOS reads when
booting the computer.
Example: You can do this by typing, at the DOS prompt,
"COPY CON AUTOEXEC.BAT" then <Rtn>. Then type "SET
VMON=BW;", then <CtrlZ>. This will add one line to your
AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Alternatively, set up a batch file that starts VAR Grade:
Example: Prepare a file called G.BAT the has the following
lines:
SET VMON=BW;
GRADE
SET VMON=;
This will set the variable, run the program, then remove
it from the environment. Some suggested batch files for
use with VAR Grade are given later in this chapter.
2. EGA and VGA
If you have EGA or VGA, you can display 43 or 50 lines,
respectively, on the screen. Go to the "Z" option of the
Main Menu, then pick "V". You can pick whether to show 25
or more lines.
3. Video 7
If you have a Video 7 VGA or VGA+ video adapter board, and
wish to have more lines or characters on a line, you can set
a DOS variable to allow the program to change the display.
You can have up to 132 characters per line and up to 60
lines per screen. Type the following line, or put it in
your AUTOEXEC.BAT file: "SET VMON=VIDEO7;". If you have a
Video 7 board and black-and-white monitor, add the line:
"SET VMON=VIDEO7;BW;". If the screen looks funny after
changing the display, your board will not go into the mode
you chose. You need to set the display back to one that
your board is capable of using.
D. Mouse Support
All mice that are Microsoft or Logitech compatible are now
supported. For all mice, the right button is equivalent to
pressing <Esc> (exit this part of the program). The left
button is equivalent to pressing <Rtn> (select this). For 3-
71
button mice (Logitech), the middle button is equivalent to
pressing <F10> (delete the current entry or word). If you move
the mouse, this is equivalent to pressing the cursor keys with
the arrows (up, down, left, and right).
E. Examples of VAR Grade Batch Files
If you are familiar with MS-DOS, the following are examples of
how to set up batch files to do what you want with VAR Grade.
For all the examples, it is assumed that you are using MS-DOS
3.0 or later, and that the program is in the directory
C:\VARGRADE. Classname is a name of any valid VAR Grade class.
Preparing Batch files:
The easiest way to prepare the following files is to use a
word processor that will write the data to disk files in
ASCII format.
To prepare the batch files from MS-DOS, type the following
(A> is the DOS prompt, the material between the [], below,
tells you what to do):
A> COPY CON batchfilename<Rtn>
[type in one of the batch files listed below]
<CtrlZ> [simultaneously press the <Ctrl> key and "Z"]
A>
GR.BAT: Batch file to run VAR Grade from any directory. Put
it in your directory where DOS is, or in one specified by
the PATH command. Start it from DOS by typing "GR
Classname".
@ECHO OFF
@REM CALL WITH "GR Classname"
IF %1Z == Z GOTO ERR
SET LASTPATH=%PATH%
SET PATH=C:\VARGRADE;%PATH%
C:\VARGRADE\GRADE %1
SET PATH=%LASTPATH%
GOTO END
:ERR
ECHO ERROR! RUN GR WITH: "GR Classname"
:END
You may want to add parts of some of the following batch files
to GR.BAT to fit your needs.
GM.BAT: Batch file if you have a monochrome monitor. Put it
in your directory where DOS is, or in one specified by the
PATH command. Start it from DOS by typing "GM Classname".
SET VMON=BW;
C:\VARGRADE\GRADE %1
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Other Program Features
GMin.BAT: Batch file to reduce the memory used by VAR Grade.
Put it in your directory where DOS is, or in one specified
by the PATH command. Start it from DOS by typing "GMin
Classname".
SET OMEM=0;
C:\VARGRADE\GRADE %1
GMax.BAT: Batch file to increase the memory used by VAR
Grade, thereby reducing the disk accesses, and increasing
the speed of parts of the program. Put it in your
directory where DOS is, or in one specified by the PATH
command. Start it from DOS by typing "GMem Classname".
SET OMEM=150000;
C:\VARGRADE\GRADE %1
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XIII. APPENDIX
A. Program Parameters--Defaults and Limits
The default values are those that are there when the program
starts.
Parameter Default Maximum
Students 0 16000
Sections 1 99
Tasks (total) 0 8000
Total points for a number task 0 1000000
Total points per sum task 0 9999999
Attendance Days 0 240
Backups made Yes -
Password used No -
Printing--default values (modifiable):
Lines per page 64 30000
Characters per line 80 255
Type size Pica
Type quality Draft
Line spacing Single
Left margin 0
Lines in header 5
Lines in the footer 5
Page numbers printed Yes
B. Backup Files
1. Preventing Data Loss
It is very important to prevent data from being lost. There
are several things that the program does to prevent this
loss.
1. You cannot exit the program without telling it whether
you want your data saved.
2. You cannot accidentally exit the program (e.g. disk drive
door open, printer not turned on), except from a power
failure or by rebooting the computer.
74
Appendix
3. Files are written in read-only format by default. You
cannot delete or erase these files in DOS. The default
can be changed to "normal" (if you do not fear deleting
your class grades), or "hidden".
4. When files are written to disk, the program checks to
make sure the files were written with the correct size
(hence were probably correctly written).
5. When files are written to disk, the previous class data
is turned into backup files. The file CLASSNAME.PAR is
changed to CLASSNAME.PAX. The file CLASSNAME.DAT is
changed to CLASSNAME.DAX. These backup files are not
read-only, and can be deleted by DOS. Should you want to
delete old class files, use the DOS 3.x command Attrib to
change the file attribute to "normal", then delete the
file.
Example, type:
A> ATTRIB -RH CLASSNAME.*
A> DEL CLASSNAME.*
You can tell the program to stop making backup files, but
we recommend that you do this only if disk space is at a
premium.
6. If a fatal error occurs during program execution, VAR
Grade will try to save any new data put into the program.
Its success depends upon the nature of the fatal error. A
fatal error is one that prevents the program from
executing correctly. Although great care has been taken
to prevent such errors, they may still occur. Therefore,
it is suggested that you immediately save your data to
disk when you have entered new data. It is also
recommended that you also print the data on your printer
to have another copy of it.
2. Recovering Old Data
To recover the information in the backup files, you must
first exit VAR Grade. When in DOS, rename them so that the
file that ends in ".PAX" ends in ".PAR" and the file that
ends in ".DAX" ends in ".DAT". Both files must have the
same classname. At the MS-DOS prompts (A>), type:
A> RENAME ACLASS.PAX ACLASS2.PAR
A> RENAME ACLASS.DAX ACLASS2.DAT
ACLASS2 will have the data from the PREVIOUS update of the
data--NOT the most recent update.
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C. Beeps or Noises
If the computer beeps or makes a noise, the memory may be quite
low, so that the information in a screen window could not be
saved. When the current window is finished, it probably will
not be able to redraw the underlying window correctly.
Pressing <AltR> will usually redraw the screen. The program
should run correctly when memory is low; however, not all
students, tasks, or attendance days may be listed when memory
is low. If you get one beep, more will probably occur due to
the limited memory. Since memory is low, you should probably
exit the program, free up some memory, and then re-run VAR
Grade.
One way to free up memory is by setting a MS-DOS variable
OMEM=0, then reentering the program.
Example: At the DOS prompt (A>), type:
A> SET OMEM=0;
76
Appendix
D. Menus
The following is a list of the major Menus in VAR Grade. They
are arranged in a hierarchy, so an indent is one menu down in
the hierarchy.
Main Menu Main Menu (continued)
Add Names Menu Grading Menu
Type in names Assign grades
Type in names and IDs Plot and assign grades
Import flat files Plot with 3D bars and
Import flat files assign grades
automatically Scale tasks
Import comma and quote Assign T-scores
files Assign standard
Individual Task Form deviations
Student Task Form Change grade names
Task Type Menu Assign cutoffs
Attendance Menu Remove cutoffs
Student Attendance Form Adjust statistics for a
Individual Attendance task
Form Delete adjustments of
Define new attendance statistics
dates Set the fewest allowed
Attendance defaults points
Save class data Help
Backup class data Manual
Write Data Menu Parameters Menu
View by section Time and dates
Print by section Video display lines
View by name Color
Print by name File protection
Print grids Backups
Export quote and comma Passwords
file Edit keys
Export flat file Class name
Export byte file Printer Menu
Plot Menu Pick a new printer
Plot the scores in 2D Set user defined
bars line codes
Plot the scores in 3D Line printer codes
bars Set character size
Plot individual trends Set print quality
in 2D bars Set the printer port
Plot individual trends Page and line
in 3D bars settings
Correlate two tests Sorting
Correlate two tests Default sections
with 3D bars Numbers of sections
Plot class statistics DOS shell
Plot an individual Quit the class
versus class statistics Get another class
Change fonts
77
XIV. GLOSSARY
ASCII A standard code that translates normal
characters and symbols into 7 bit binary
computer code.
AUTOEXEC.BAT When you start your computer, it looks for
this file to get information about the
operating environment.
Bars Squares used to depict student scores in the
plots. They can look two dimensional or
three dimensional.
Batch One of three types of files that MS-DOS can
execute. Batch files are written in ASCII
characters, with each line telling MS-DOS
what to do.
Cell A highlighted area of the screen that holds
one piece of data.
Comma & Quote Files Files that have strings of characters between
double quotes (""), and commas separating
pieces of data. Numbers are separated only
by commas.
Cursor Keys Keys that move the position of the cursor on
the screen. They include the arrow keys, the
home, end, page up, and page down keys.
Default The value when the program starts.
Directory Group of files on a disk. Files on hard
disks are usually grouped together in
directories to make it easier to find the
file you need. Drives are also directories.
Display Adapter A card in the computer that controls the
monitor. It can be a Hercules card, CGA,
EGA, or VGA card, as well as other cards.
78
Glossary
Edit Keys When edit keys are used, the left and right
arrow cursor keys move within a cell instead
of between cells, and the home and end keys
move to the beginning and end of the cell.
To "use" edit keys means that you can use the
left and right arrow, home, and end keys to
move around a cell. To move between cells
when "using" edit keys, you need to use
<Ctrl>-arrow keys.
Fixed Disk A disk that cannot be removed from the
computer.
Flat Files Files that have data in columns, separated by
spaces.
Floppy Disk A disk that can be removed from a drive.
Hard Disk A disk that cannot be removed from the
computer.
Install Put the files needed by a program onto new
disks such that the new disks have the
program files in the places needed by that
program.
Line Printer A printer that prints non-graphics
characters. All printers are line printers.
Main Menu The menu that lists the major sections of the
program.
Menu-driven Uses menus to let you reach all parts and
features of the program.
Monochrome Black and white.
Overlay The part of the program that is in memory
only when needed. It is read in from a disk
when it is needed.
Path A list of directories that tells MS-DOS where
executable programs are. The path is set by
typing "SET PATH=directory1;directory2;" at
the DOS prompt, where directory1 and
directory2, etc., are names of directories.
Ports Printers are connected to either serial or
parallel cards in your computer. Each card
has a different designation for its address.
These addresses are the ports.
79
Printer Codes Codes sent to the printer to control how it
prints data.
Regular tasks Those tasks that you can put in new data.
They are the number, letter, and extra credit
tasks.
Special keys Special keys are those that do not print
normal (ASCII) keys. The function keys (<F1>
through <F10>), the <Alt>, <Ctrl>, <Ins>,
<Del>, and the cursor keys.
Special tasks Those tasks that are calculated by the
program. You cannot put in new scores into
these tasks.
Task A graded assignment for the class.
Toggle Turn on and off.
80
XV. FURTHER INFORMATION
This program is COPYRIGHTED (C) 1987-90 by Dennis Revie.
All rights are reserved.
Schools, school districts, and colleges and universities can
get a site license ("group" register) VAR Grade at reduced rates.
Write for details, including information on special needs.
A. Information
This manual should contain most of your questions. Should you
need further assistance, either to clarify parts of the
program, to suggest changes, to report bugs, or to obtain a
custom version of the program, write to the address below. You
will receive a prompt reply. This program is user supported
and your comments are encouraged. Details on registration are
listed near the beginning of the program.
B. Registration
This program can be distributed as SHAREWARE. It is not free.
You may use it on a preview basis only. If you find the
program useful, you MUST register it by sending $30 (for
registration only) or $40 (to register and also receive a 78
page laser-printed manual) to the address below. See the
Notice on page i for more details.
Dennis Revie
Attn: VAR GRADE
4804 Highland Ave
Oxnard, CA 93033-7818
Modem (information only):
BIX: revied
CIS: 73427, 112
81