TomJohnson

Yosemite,

Are you saying that I posted too many questions to the forum and did not select the Resolved option in the drop-down box enough?

Tom

fatalcure, i changed the guest login to the site. if you want me to send you the login info so you can view it, just send me a request from this page: http://stc-suncoast.org/contact-us/

I created an excel spreadsheet that lists grades by a student ID number, which no one knows but the student. I will get some feedback today as to whether this method is acceptable by students or not.

Manstraw, if you could develop that grading plugin as you described, it would be perfect. I’m telling you, give WordPress one year and some super-techie teacher will put together a customized theme that puts both WebCT and Blackboard out of business. Particularly for writing classes, where peer reviews and commenting is frequent, WordPress really excels.

Did you already see my site? Email me if you want access, b/c it’s password protected. You asked how I’m managing assignments. Basically I made each assignment its own category, and then I have students select the category their assignment belongs to. Some students forgot to select it, so I decided to just set the default category to the assignment they’re supposed to turn in.

Something that has proven to be invaluable is a little piece of code that allows the category description to automatically display above the category post.

<?php if ( is_category() ) : ?>
<h2 id=”category-name-header”>
<?php echo $cache_categories[$cat]->cat_name ?></h2>
<?php add_filter(‘category_description’, ‘wpautop’); ?>
<?php add_filter(‘category_description’, ‘wptexturize’); ?>
<div id=”category-description”>
<?php echo category_description(); ?>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>

I put the above right before the loop in my archives.php page.

If I need to change the assignment, I just change the description in the admin menu (manage > categories), rather than going into a custom page template and changing it. Very helpful.

Another helpful thing that I wished I’d looked at more is integrating the Ocacia Bar (Admin menu) at the top of the site. I realized in aftermath that my theme didn’t really accomodate it, so I’ll have to change that at some point. It makes it much simpler for students.

Actually, while a private comment plugin would be nice, in the larger scheme of grades it does not work so well. Reason being, as an instructor, over the course of a semester you may receive 30 different assignments from 30 different students. How will you keep track of 900 different grades, each sent as a private comment? Worse, as a private comment on different blogs?

Here’s what I’m planning to do. I am using Frontpage’s web components to create an excel spreadsheet. Then I am creating two columns: one for student names, and the other for student IDs. When I enter grades, I work with the file in Frontpage, and before I save it, I’ll hide the column with the student names and then protect the active sheet.

As far as I know, there’s no way for students to view the names column after it’s been hidden. I may be wrong about this — maybe some of you could easily hack into that. But I don’t know of any other way to easily record, tabulate, and distribute grades anonymously to students.