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****** **** **** **** *** **** **** ****** ****** ****** ** ***** ****** ****** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ****** ** **** ** ** ******* ***** ***** ***** ** **** ** ** ******* ***** ***** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** * ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ****** ****** ******* ** ** ****** ****** **** **** **** ******** *** *** **** **** A TEACHER'S GRADEBOOK Version 1.1 dated 9/14/86 Serial # 11085 Copyright (c) 1986 by Kenneth L Lindsay Aiga Publications PO Box 148 Laie, HI 96762 User-Supported Software All rights reserved, except those expressly released below. PC-CLASS may be copied and distributed freely by individuals, users' groups, and other organizations devoted primarily to the dissemination of non-commercial software, provided the following two conditions are met: (1) All of the files on the distribution disk are copied, and each file is copied exactly, without alteration of any kind. Permission is NOT granted to modify any of the PC-CLASS files in any way. (2) Copies are distributed free of charge, except for a nominal charge, not exceeding $10, to cover the cost of duplication and distribution. Users who find PC-CLASS useful are urged to become Registered Contributors by sending a contribution of $39 to the author at the above address. Be sure to include your name and address. For your convenience, a form, PC-CLASS.INV, is included on the distribution disk; you may print this file and fill in the blanks. There is room on the form to include suggestions for additions and modifications to the program, and, of course, Registered Contributors may send such suggestions at any time. In addition to encouraging the User-Supported concept, which makes professional quality software available at prices which are not inflated by the high cost of distributing and promoting commercial software, Registered Contributors will receive a free copy of any later version of PC-CLASS which results from user feedback. Becoming a Registered Contributor implies that you have tested PC-CLASS on your equipment and found it useful, but does not create a license or sales agreement between the Contributor and the author or Aiga Publications. The author has taken extreme care to make PC-CLASS error- free and easy to use. Should he become aware of serious bugs affecting the functionality of the program, all Registered Contributors will be notified of the necessary program patches. The author and Aiga Publications disclaim all other liability for errors resulting from use of PC-CLASS and for the security and integrity of the databases created through use of PC-CLASS. <FF> TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Topic 3 ABOUT PC-CLASS 3 Hardware Limitations 4 Software Limitations 5 THE PC-CLASS FILE STRUCTURE 8 OF MICE AND MEN: THE PC-CLASS USER INTERFACE 10 DATA ENTRY: THE FULL SCREEN FIELD EDITOR 11 GETTING STARTED: THE OPENING MENU AND THE COMMAND LINE 11 Preparation 11 The Copyright Notice 11 The Opening Menu 12 Option (1) Create a database for a new class 13 Option (2) Begin working on an existing database 13 Option (3) Delete an existing database 13 Option (4) Exit this program 14 Starting PC-CLASS from the Command Line 15 USING PC-CLASS: THE MAIN MENU 15 Option (1) Add additional students to the current database 16 Option (2) Delete dropped students from the current database 16 Option (3) Enter or edit a column of grades for the entire class 17 Option (4) Correct the record for an individual student 17 Option (5) Weighted average grade for each student 18 Option (6) List database on printer, screen, or disk: LIST MENU 18 Option (7) Save the current database and continue working on it 18 Option (8) Save the current database and load another database 18 Option (9) Save the current database and exit this program 19 USING PC-CLASS: THE LIST MENU 19 Option (1) List on printer 19 Option (2) List on screen 19 Option (3) List on disk 19 Option (4) List student id and single grade column on printer 19 Option (5) Return to MAIN MENU 20 THE POWER USER: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF PC-CLASS 21 GETTING OUT OF TROUBLE 22 USER SUPPORT: A TWO-WAY STREET <FF> ABOUT PC-CLASS The original version of PC-CLASS was written as a Christmas present for my wife, to assist her in maintaining class records for the classes she was teaching at Brigham Young University - Hawaii Campus. Her enthusiastic response prompted me to rewrite the program for general distribution. The present version, like the original, is written for the IBM Personal Computer in Turbo Pascal using FASTSCREEN (trademarks of International Business Machines Corp., Boca Raton, FL, Borland International, Scotts Valley, CA and Technisoft, Charlottesville, VA, respectively). There are other screen utilities with more powerful features, but FASTSCREEN has the virtue of being small enough to permit creation of useful programs with total code size less than 64K. This has two advantages: (1) the programmer does not have to worry about creating overlays; and (2) the resulting program will run faster, since the entire program and its data can reside in memory. PC-CLASS is essentially a special-purpose program designed to maintain a set of databases containing a teacher's class records. A separate database is maintained for each class, containing each student's name and ident- ification number, and space for up to 16 numerical or letter grades. See the section on file structure for a more complete description of the database. Hardware Limitations PC-CLASS was written for an IBM PC with at least 128K of memory, PCDOS 2.0 or higher, at least one floppy disk drive, and a color or monochrome monitor capable of displaying 25 lines of 80 characters per line in character mode. A printer is not required, but is highly recommended. Any 80- or 132-column printer should work without a driver, since PC-CLASS does not invoke any fancy printer features such as bold, emphasized, or double- width characters. PC-CLASS has not been tested on other machines. The limiting feature is probably FASTSCREEN's handling of screen output. FASTSCREEN's manual says that it "supports the IBM PC and true compatible computers, including the XT and AT". If you have other "compatible" computers, be sure to test PC-CLASS thoroughly to make sure it will work before sending in your contribution. If it DOES work on your machine, a note to that effect with your contribution would be appreciated (or describe your equipment briefly on a copy of the PC-CLASS.INV file included on the distribution disk). <FF> Software Limitations PC-CLASS is dimensioned for a maximum of 500 students per class. I have never heard of a class larger than this, but if this should prove to be a problem, the author will compile a larger version for any Registered Contributor upon request. The entire database is loaded into RAM when PC-CLASS is started up, and requires approximately 0.1K per student plus 1.9K per class, while the PC-CLASS program itself requires an an additional 78K, so a class of 500 should require about 130K. Adding in the space required for the operating system and for a modest assortment of resident utilities, we see that a machine with at least 256K may be needed to handle 500 students, but that a 128K machine ought to handle 50 or so students comfortably if all of the resident utilities are unloaded. Incidentally, except for a print spooler, I do not use any resident utilities myself, and have not tested PC-CLASS with any of the popular ones. If you use them, you are on your own. Once again, be sure to test PC-CLASS with your own system before sending in your contribution. The only real software limitation is in the fixed size and format of the database. The 14-character limit on the LASTNAME and FIRSTNAME fields is not likely to be too troublesome, although my wife did turn up with a 15-character last name recently. (She put the 15th character into the FIRSTNAME field, followed by a comma, so that it printed out correctly except for a space between the 14th and 15th characters.) Similarly, 9 characters seems adequate for a Student ID, since it will accommodate a Social Security number. But the maximum of 16 grade columns may prove limiting for a few users, although it should suffice in most cases unless you like to keep daily recitation grades or have a lot of short quizzes. The solution here could be to maintain more than one database for a single class. However, if you need to maintain additional information about each student, such as his age or hair color or what his major is, you will have to use a different program, such as a general purpose database or spreadsheet program, or perhaps create a supplementary file yourself containing the additional information. <FF> THE PC-CLASS FILE STRUCTURE Each class database created by PC-CLASS consists of a set of four files. Total file space required is about 0.2K per student plus about 3.8K per database. Thus three 500-student classes or up to 36 30-student classes should fit comfortably on a single 360K floppy disk. Note, however, that only the 16 most recently created databases on that disk will be accessible through the normal startup procedure. See the section on GETTING STARTED to learn how to access the remaining databases. The file structure was described briefly in INSTALL.DOC; those descriptions are repeated below, with more detail in some cases, so that you will not have to refer back to INSTALL.DOC. In these descriptions, DBNAME is used to represent a name selected by the user to represent a particular class database: DBNAME.TXT This is the main file containing the student records. The first line contains the number of records in the database, while the second line contains the name of the CURVE file to be used with that particular database. See below for a description of the CURVE file. The rest of the file consists of a series of records for each student, followed by a series of records containing summary information for the class as a whole. Each of these records contains the following fields: LASTNAME 14 characters FIRSTNAME 14 characters STUDENT ID Number 9 characters GRADES (16 fields) 4 characters each The summary information uses the same record format. The LASTNAME field in this case ranges from ZZ00 ... ZZ14, so that when sorted alphabetically with the rest of the database these will always remain at the bollom of the list. When listed on the screen or printer, these special lastnames are suppressed, and only the firstnames are listed. These are: Max Possible Sixth Decile First Decile High Score Median Low Score Ninth Decile Fourth Decile No of Scores Eighth Decile Third Decile Class Average Seventh Decile Second Decile Std Deviation PC-CLASS calculates and maintains this summary information automatically for each column of grades in the database. DBNAME.HDR The first line of this HEADER file contains up to 64 characters supplied by the user when the database was created. This header line will appear at the top of each page when the database is listed on the screen or printer. The rest of this file contains two-line groupings for each currently filled grade column. The first line contains the column number, and the second line contains up to 32 characters supplied by the user at the time that column of grades was first entered, to describe the contents of that grade column. <FF> DBNAME.TBK This is a backup file created automatically by PC-CLASS whenever it reads a copy of DBNAME.TXT from the disk. It contains a copy of the version of the DBNAME.TXT which is about to be modified while it is in computer memory. DBNAME.HBK This is another automatic backup file containing the previous version of DBNAME.HDR. FILELIST.LST In addition to the above four files for each database, each data disk created by the user will contain a file by this name, created automatically by PC-CLASS, containing a list of the 16 most recently created databases on that disk for use by the Dynamic Menu routine. The program disk will normally contain the following files, copied from the distribution disk during the installation process: CLASS.COM The PC-CLASS program in machine language form, ready to run. CLASS87.COM An alternative version of the PC-CLASS program, compiled for use with the 8087 numeric co-processor. Use CLASS87 if your machine has an 8087 installed; otherwise use CLASS. CLASS.TXT A starter file containing only the 15 pseudo-records (ZZ00 ... ZZ14), used by PC-CLASS as a nucleus from which to build up new class databases. INSTALL.COM An auxiliary program used at installation time, and later if desired, to create SETUP and CURVE files. These files, with .STP and .CRV extensions, serve to customize PC-CLASS to match your computer system and numeric to letter grade conversion requirements. See INSTALL.DOC for details. LIST.COM Another auxiliary program for use in printing out the PC-CLASS documentation files, PC-CLASS.DOC and INSTALL.DOC. COLOR.STP A setup file preconfigured for a color monitor, two floppy drives, and an 80-column, 66 lines-per-page printer. MONO.STP Another preconfigured setup file for a monochrome monitor, otherwise identical to COLOR.STP. (continued on next page) <FF> DEFAULT.STP This file is identical to COLOR.STP. Since DEFAULT.STP is the file actually used by PC-CLASS unless another SETUP file is specified when PC-CLASS is loaded, both COLOR.STP and MONO.STP are kept available for use when temporarily working on another machine. Either COLOR.STP or MONO.STP can be copied to DEFAULT.STP for normal use, or your own custom DEFAULT.STP can be created easily using INSTALL.COM. DEFAULT.CRV A file containing letter-to-numeric grade conversion tables for use in fixed-scale conversions as well as for grading on a curve. These tables can be used as is, or you can create a custom version using INSTALL.COM. You can even create a separate CURVE file for each class if you wish. ABCDF.CRV This is a special curve file for use when you wish to use only A, B, C, D, and F as letter grades, without using + and - grades such as A- and C+. README.DOC This is a short documentation file with a brief description of PC-CLASS and instructions on how to print copies of INSTALL.DOC and PC-CLASS.DOC. INSTALL.DOC This is a documentation file with instructions on how to set up your system to use PC-CLASS most effectively with your particular hardware configuration and grading system. PC-CLASS.DOC This file, with a complete description of PC-CLASS and instructions for using it effectively. PC-CLASS.INV A form which may be printed out to facilitate sending in your contribution and becoming a Registered Contributor, containing blanks for name, address, phone, date, and a description of your equipment, as well as space for comments and suggestions. PC-CLASS.BAT A short batch file, designed for those who try to run PC-CLASS without reading PC-CLASS.DOC and try to invoke the program by entering PC-CLASS (instead of the recommended CLASS) at the DOS prompt. <FF> OF MICE AND MEN: THE PC-CLASS USER INTERFACE It would be reasonable to expect that by now there would be nearly universal agreement on what constitutes the "best" user-interface for the IBM PC. Yet that is not the case. Command lines, function keys, Ctrl, Alt, and Shift key combinations, mice, icons, and various styles of menus all have their adherents. To some extent, this reflects the fact that what is "best" for one application is not necessarily "best" for another. Perhaps more significant, however, is the desire of program developers to differentiate their products from the 47 other competitive but functionally equivalent products on the market. Still, two styles of user interface appear to be becoming fashionable: the mouse/icon approach originally developed by Xerox and popularized by Apple, and the horizontal highlighted Lotus-style menu. Being singularly uninfluenced by fashion and unaware of any serious competitive programs to be differentiated from, I felt free in developing PC-CLASS to seek my own interpretation of the "best" user interface. It was clear from the start that some form of menu structure was indicated, since in PC-CLASS the user is frequently required to choose from among several alternative actions. The style of menu chosen was based upon the following design philosophy: (1) The user is entitled to a clear and unambiguous description of the available choices. This rules out icons and one-word horizontal menus (Goodbye, fashion!) and leads to full-screen menus with a full line of text available to describe each choice. (2) Only one keystroke should be required to choose from among the available choices. This does NOT mean one keystroke followed by a carriage return, and it most emphatically does NOT mean moving a cursor to the desired choice and pressing the carriage return, or moving a mouse to the desired choice and clicking (or, even worse, double-clicking) a mouse button. These are all inefficient methods of making a selection. Whether the single keystroke is a numeral, a letter key, or a function key is not critical. The use of numerals in PC-CLASS was a fairly arbitrary choice. (3) Since single-keystroke selection means that the user will occasionally press the wrong key and make an undesired selection, it is imperative that the program design make it possible to return from an undesired menu selection without taking any irreversible action, either by doing nothing or by taking some simple action which can be reversed later by making a different menu selection. Wherever possible, a common escape method (the Esc key) should be used for recovery, or, if this is not possible, a zero or null entry when the program expects a numeral or a string. (continued on next page) <FF> (4) The use of the carriage return to terminate user input should only be required in cases where the length of the response string is unknown to the program, so that the carriage return must function as a string terminator. Thus, to specify a single digit menu choice does not require a carriage return, but in specifying a record number between 1 and 500, a carriage return is needed, since a proper response could have 1, 2, or 3 digits. (5) Whenever possible, all the information needed by the user before taking action should be made available on the screen without the necessity of asking for it via a Help key. If the user needs to read the information it is there waiting for him, and if he is familiar enough with the program that he does not need to read it, it is easy enough for him to ignore it. This approach makes "context-sensitive help" (a currently fashionable term) automatically available without being requested (a zero-keystroke help facility). <FF> DATA ENTRY: THE FULL SCREEN FIELD EDITOR With the exception of responses to menus and prompts, all data entry and editing in PC-CLASS uses a full screen field editor operating on data entry screens in which suitably labeled fields are arranged in a vertical column with the currently active field highlighted. The editing keys on the numeric keypad are used to move about within a field and between fields and have the meanings you would expect them to have if you tried to use them without reading the following explanations: CARRIAGE RETURN moves down to the start of the next field. TAB also moves down to the start of the next field. (SHIFT TAB is not activated, and will be ignored.) LEFT ARROW and RIGHT ARROW move left and right within the current field. UP ARROW moves up to the start of the previous field. DOWN ARROW moves down to the start of the next field (just like CR). HOME and END move to the beginning and end of the current field. PGDN moves down to the start of the last field on the current screen. From there, another PGDN, or a DOWN ARROW or CR or TAB, brings up the next screen, if any, or exits back to the main menu. PGUP moves up to the start of the first field on the current screen. From there, another PGUP, or an UP ARROW, brings back the previous screen, if any, or exits back to the main menu. BACKSPACE deletes the character to the left of the cursor. DEL deletes the character under the cursor. INS toggles between INSERT mode and OVERSTRIKE mode. The default OVERSTRIKE mode is reestablished automatically whenever a new field is highlighted. ESC exits back to the main menu. <FF> GETTING STARTED: THE OPENING MENU AND THE COMMAND LINE Preparation Before using PC-CLASS for the first time, you should have read README.DOC and INSTALL.DOC and followed the instructions in INSTALL.DOC for preparing a PC-CLASS Program Disk and a PC-CLASS Data Disk (and for creating your own personalized versions of the SETUP and CURVE files, unless you are satisfied with the distribution versions of DEFAULT.STP and DEFAULT.CRV, at least for the time being). If you are using the distribution version of DEFAULT.STP, place your Program Disk in Drive A and your Data Disk in Drive B; or if you have created your own version of DEFAULT.STP, place these disks as specified in your DEFAULT.STP. Then log onto the drive/directory containing the Program Disk and at the DOS prompt, enter: CLASS If you are the adventurous type who likes to play around with a program before reading the manual, you have probably already learned that you can achieve the same result, although slightly more slowly, by entering: PC-CLASS ; having learned this, you can now safely delete PC-CLASS.BAT from the Program Disk if you wish, since its purpose has now been achieved. The Copyright Notice After entering CLASS, you will be greeted by the inevitable Copyright Notice. You won't realize it right away, but this immediately involves you in one of the novel features of PC-CLASS. Initially, the Copyright Notice is displayed for about eight seconds, but the next time you load the program, the display time is reduced by a factor of two, and the display time continues to be reduced by a factor of two each time you load the program, until the display becomes only a fleeting glimpse. If the display disappears before you finish reading it, you can read the same information, in much more detail, on the first page of this manual. If you want to restore the original eight-second display, you can do so by running the INSTALL program to create a new DEFAULT.STP, or by using your own text editor to edit DEFAULT.STP and replace the last line of the file with a zero. The Opening Menu The disappearance of the Copyright Notice brings on the Opening Menu, which offers you four options: (1) Create a database for a new class (2) Begin working on an existing database (3) Delete an existing database (4) Exit this program The first time you run PC-CLASS, Options (2) and (3) obviously do not apply; you will normally select Option (1) unless you were just browsing. <FF> You could probably use PC-CLASS quite successfully from this point on without any further documentation, just by following the menus and prompts and the help panels which appear automatically on the screen. The rest of this manual is primarily for reference, and to improve your understanding of the program by describing a bit of what goes on "under the hood". Option (1) Create a database for a new class Choosing Option (1) sets into motion a complex series of operations. First, you are prompted for the name of the CURVE file to be used with the new database; you may accept DEFAULT.CRV by pressing the Carriage Return, or enter the name of another file you have created (or will create) using INSTALL. Then the CLASS.TXT file is read into memory, and you are prompted for the name of the class database you wish to create from the CLASS.TXT nucleus. Then the FILELIST.LST file is read in and checked to see whether a file already exists with your proposed name. If so, you will be given the opportunity to choose another name or to overwrite the existing file. If you choose to overwrite, the existing .TXT and .HDR files by that name will be converted to .TBK and .HBK files. If you need to save these overwritten files for any reason, you must rename them after you exit from PC-CLASS and before you use PC-CLASS again on the new database with that name, since at that time the .TBK and .HBK files will become the backup versions of the new database. If you have selected a new name, instead of overwriting an old name, the new name will be added to the FILELIST.LST file. Having named the new database, you will be prompted for a header text which will appear as the top line on every page whenever the database is listed on the printer or the screen. This can be any sort of text, up to a maximum of 64 characters, such as BYUHC PSYCHOLOGY 101 Section 2 Spring 1986 When working with a new database, you really have only three possible paths to follow: to enter names and id numbers for the students, to quit working on the new database and start work on another database, or to quit working and exit from PC-CLASS; so at this stage you are presented with a mini-menu which offers those three options. Normally, you will choose the first of these options. This mini-menu is really a subset of the main menu, which is described in the next main section of this manual. See that section for the details of what happens when you choose the first option from the mini-menu. <FF> Option (2) Begin working on an existing database Option (2) from the Opening Menu introduces another new feature of PC-CLASS, the Dynamic Menu. When you select this Option, PC-CLASS reads the FILELIST.LST file and creates a menu which contains the database names in FILELIST.LST, appearing in reverse chronological order, with the most recently created database appearing at the top of the list. If there are more than 16 databases on your Data Disk (unlikely unless you have a hard disk and do not like to clean up your files), only the 16 most recent databases will appear on the menu. Later in this section, you will learn how to access any databases which do not appear on the Dynamic Menu. When this menu first appears, the database at the top of the list is highlighted. The highlighting moves down, highlighting each database in turn, until it reaches the bottom of the menu, and then moves back to the top of the menu to begin another cycle. You can adjust the cycling rate by pressing either of the two plus keys (+) to speed up, or the hyphen/minus keys (-) to slow down. PC-CLASS remembers the most recent cycling rate, and begins at that rate the next time the Dynamic Menu appears. To select a database, all you have to do is press the Space Bar when the desired database is highlighted. Option (3) Delete an existing database When you choose Option (3), PC-CLASS brings up the Dynamic Menu again, and you use the Space Bar in the same way to select the database to be deleted. Oncy you have made your selection, you are prompted to confirm your choice, in case your timing was off and you pressed the Space Bar at the wrong time. Once you have confirmed your intention, PC-CLASS deletes all four files with that name (with .TXT, .HDR, .TBK, and .HBK extensions) and removes that name from the FILELIST.LST file so that it will not appear on the next menu. Option (4) Exit this program When Option (4) is selected, PC-CLASS clears the screen and returns you to the DOS prompt. Even though PC-CLASS maintains backup files on your Data Disk automatically, it is a good idea to make a backup copy of your Data Disk before starting to work on another program, just in case something goes wrong with the original Data Disk. <FF> Starting PC-CLASS from the Command Line The preceding discussion of the Opening Menu describes the standard method of starting PC-CLASS. This is the method you will be likely to use most of the time, but another method is available for special purposes. Instead of entering CLASS at the DOS prompt, you may enter: CLASS DBNAME , or CLASS DBNAME CRVNAME , or CLASS DBNAME CRVNAME STPNAME All three of these commands load PC-CLASS with the DBNAME database, bypass the Opening Menu, and proceed directly to the main menu. The second and third commands load CRVNAME.CRV instead of the CURVE file specified when the DBNAME database was created, and the third command also uses STPNAME.STP instead of DEFAULT.STP. NOTE: This is the ONLY way to start PC-CLASS if you need to override the usual CURVE file or SETUP file assignments. Suppose, for example, that your color monitor is in the shop temporarily, and you had to borrow a monochrome monitor for a couple of days. Then you might enter CLASS PSYCH DEFAULT MONO to load the PSYCH database with the DEFAULT curve file using MONO.STP. If you are a "power user", you may find that you save a couple of seconds by using the CLASS DBNAME command, but at the expense of having to remember the names of all of your active database files. On balance, it probably pays to keep things simple and use the standard CLASS command, saving the command line approach for the special situations when you need to override the usual CURVE or SETUP file assignments. <FF> USING PC-CLASS: THE MAIN MENU The PC-CLASS Main Menu offers the following choices: (1) Add additional students to the current database (2) Delete dropped students from the current database (3) Enter or edit a column of grades for the entire class (4) Correct the record for an individual student (5) Weighted average grade for each student (6) List database on printer, screen, or disk: LIST MENU (7) Save the current database and continue working on it (8) Save the current database and load another database (9) Save the current database and exit this program One other major function of PC-CLASS, calculating the summary data for each grade column, does not appear on the main menu, since it is carried out automatically for each grade column whenever data in that column are entered or changed. This function sorts the grades into descending order, counts the number of scores in that column, finds the highest and lowest scores and calculates the median, the deciles, the mean, and the standard deviation. In calculating deciles, PC-CLASS interpolates between adjacent scores if the number of scores is not evenly divisible by ten. Thus, if there are 37 students, the first decile is the 3.7th score, and is computed by by adding 70% of the fourth score (counting from the bottom of the sorted list) and 30% of the third score. The following sub-sections describe each of the entries in the Main Menu. Option (1) Add additional students to the current database When PC-CLASS is loaded, the entire class database is read into the computer's memory, in a storage area called the heap. When first read in, the database is in alphabetical order, since it is stored on the disk in alphabetical order. When you choose Option (1), another record is added to the heap, and an editing screen appears so that you may enter the student's name and id number. If this is not the first time you have used this database, some of the grade columns may be active; it so, fields for those columns also appear on the screen, and you may insert grades for the new student at the same time. You may move about the screen at will, using the editing keys as described in an earlier section, entering and correcting data in any order. When finished, you may exit by pressing the Esc key. Do not worry if you exit prematurely, since Option (4) will give you the opportunity to make corrections later. When you exit, PC-CLASS inserts the new record into alphabetical order. Actually, the record is not moved, but an internal index which lists the alphabetical order of the records is adjusted. Then another screen appears, with instructions to press the Esc key to stop adding students, or any other key to continue. The Esc key returns you to the Main Menu (after recalculating the Grade Column Summary, if any columns are active), while any other key (usually, the Space Bar) brings back a fresh editing screen. <FF> Option (2) Delete dropped students from the current database PC-CLASS does not ask you to enter the student's name or id number in order to identify the student to be dropped. If you have taught at a school with a high percentage of foreign students you will understand why! Instead, Option (2) brings up a screen containing an alphabetical list of students with a record number in front of each name. This is NOT the student's id number, but the order in which that student's name appears in the alphabetical index. You are asked to press the Esc key when you have located the student you want to drop, and then to enter the student's record number. Since this number can have 1, 2, or 3 digits, you will have to press the Carriage Return when you have finished entering the record number. If your class has more than 20 students, the student you are looking for may not appear on the first screen. In that case, pressing the PgDn key will move to the next screenful of students (and PgUp will return again), so keep paging through the student list until you find the right student, and then press the Esc key and enter his number. Once you enter the record number, PC-CLASS removes that student's name from the alphabetical index, recalculates the Grade Column Summary, and returns you to the Main Menu. Option (3) Enter or edit a column of grades for the entire class Upon choosing this Option, you are greeted, naturally enough, by a request to specify which grade column you wish to select. PC-CLASS then checks this column number against the list of active column numbers which is maintained in the .HDR file. If there is a match, you are warned that that column number is already active and asked if you want to select another column number, to overwrite the data now occupying that column, or to edit the data now occupying that column. If you are creating a new column, or overwriting an existing column, you are next prompted to enter up to 32 characters of text to serve as a column header when the database is listed. With these preliminaries out of the way, you are greeted by a data entry screen showing the record number, the student's name and id number and a grade field for the specified column, for the first 22 students in the class. The grade column will be empty unless you are editing the column. Empty or full, you may enter fresh data or correct existing data using the editing keys in exactly the same way as when adding data for single students, moving on to the next screenful of data with the PgDn key and back again with PgUp. Note, however, that the cursor will not move out of the grade column. You may not change a student's name or id number from this option; Option (4) is provided for that purpose. When you are finished entering data, pressing the Esc key will put you back in the Main Menu. <FF> Option (4) Correct the record for an individual student As in Option (2), when you choose this Option, it is necessary to identify the student whose record you want to correct. Option (4) therefore brings up the same alphabetical list of students described under Option (2), and you identify the student in the same way, by paging through the list until you find the student's record number, then pressing the Esc key and entering the record number. This then brings up a data entry screen identical to the one described under Option (1). You may use the editing keys to make any necessary corrections, and then press the Esc key to exit. This triggers a recalculation of the Grade Column Summary and then returns you to the Main Menu. Option (5) Weighted average grade for each student This Option permits interconversion of letter and numeric grades in either direction, conversion of numeric grades to curved letter grades, and construction of a new grade column which is the weighted average of any desired subset of existing grade columns. It is the most complex Option in the program, and is the real heart of PC-CLASS. The manipulations made possible through this option, together with the calculation of the Grade Column Summary information, convinced me that it was worth the trouble to write PC-CLASS, instead of merely setting up a database for my wife using an existing database or spreadsheet program. Choosing Option (5) brings up a full screen of help information. You will want to read this carefully unless you have been using the program regularly, in which case you can press any key immediately after choosing this option, and move on to the next screen right away. The next screen lists the currently active grade columns, along with their labels and a field into which you may enter the weights you wish to assign to each of the columns. These weights must be integers, and you must assign at least one non-zero weight to an active column. You must also assign a zero to the target column, where you want to put the weighted average. This will usually be an inactive column with no label attached, but you can designate an active column if you wish, and the weighted average will overwrite that column after it has been calculated. In deciding how to assign weights, do not try to compensate for the fact that the maximum possible score is higher for one column than for another; PC-CLASS corrects for this automatically. So if you want one column to be weighted twice as heavily as another, use weights of 2 and 1, regardless of the maximum possible scores for the two columns. If you have assigned more than one weight, as you normally will do unless you are doing a numeric/letter grade conversion, a nearly identical screen will now appear. On this screen you may designate one of the weighted columns as critical, and any other column as a substitute column. When a grade is missing from the critical column for a particular student, the weighted average will not be computed; instead the target column will be filled with the contents of the substitute column, or left blank if no substitute column has been designated. (continued) <FF> Now you will be asked to specify whether the target column should receive a numeric grade, a standard letter grade, or a curved letter grade. If you choose the curved option, PC-CLASS will calculate a curve table showing the break points between the various letter grades, and ask whether you want to list it on the screen, the printer, or not at all. Finally, if you have assigned more than one weight, you are presented with an option suggested by my wife, who likes to motivate her students by offering to throw out a low score on the first exam if they do sufficiently better (20 points or more in her classes) on the later exams. You can specify any improvement differential between 0 and 50 points; specifying zero disables this option. Once these preliminaries are out of the way, PC-CLASS calculates the weighted average, and returns you to the Main Menu. Note that if you assign only one non-zero weight, you are essentially doing a numeric/letter grade conversion rather than computing a weighted average in the usual sense of the term; the calculation method used is general enough to handle both situations. Option (6) List database on printer, screen, or disk: LIST MENU Choosing this Option brings up another menu, the List Menu, which is described in detail in the next major section of this manual. Option (7) Save the current database and continue working on it This Option is provided in case you have entered a lot of data into the current database, have still more work to do on that database, and want to save the work you have done so far so that it will not be lost in case of power failure. The .TXT and .HDR files as they now exist in computer memory are written to the disk, and you are placed back in the Main Menu to continue working. The .TBK and .HBK files created when you loaded this database will not be changed. In writing the .TXT file back to the disk, records are not written in the order in which they are stored on the heap. Instead, the records are written in the order they appear in the alphabetically sorted index file. Thus, the disk .TXT file is always maintained in alphabetical order. Option (8) Save the current database and load another database This Option performs the same file-handling operations as Option (7), but then returns you to the Opening Menu instead of the Main Menu. Option (9) Save the current database and exit this program Choosing this Option also triggers the same file-handling operations as Option (7), but then exits from PC-CLASS and returns you to the DOS prompt. <FF> USING PC-CLASS: THE LIST MENU This menu offers only five options: (1) List on printer (2) List on screen (3) List on disk (4) List student id and single grade column on printer (5) Return to MAIN MENU These are fairly self-explanatory. The first three Options let you print out the entire database, either on the printer, the screen, or the disk. If printing to disk, the file is printed with an .LST extension. The page length is different when printing to the screen, since fewer lines are available, but the printouts are otherwise similar. Each page of the printout consists on one or two sheets, depending upon how many grade columns are active and the number of characters per line (80 for the screen, and usually 80 or 132 for the printer or disk, depending on the column width entry in the SETUP file. Up to eight grade columns will fit on a single 80-column sheet; the maximum of 16 columns will fit on a single sheet of 120 or more columns. Option (4) is provided so that you may print out a table, sorted by student id number, containing only the student id number and a single column of grades. This is intended primarily for posting of final exam scores or final semester grades in an anonymous fashion. Option (5) will return you to the Main Menu, where you can continue work on the current database if you wish, return to the Opening Menu, or exit to DOS. <FF> THE POWER USER: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF PC-CLASS We have already discussed one feature of PC-CLASS which the power user needs to master: specifying the database name, and perhaps the CURVE file and SETUP file, on the command line in order to bypass the Opening Menu and to access non-standard CURVE or SETUP files. The power user will also soon learn to ignore the help messages and to respond to the menus and prompts without stopping to read them. Used in this way, the menus flash on and off the screen fast enough that it almost seems as if they were not there at all. Suppose, for example, that you know you want to work on the newest database on your Data Disk. The true power user in this case will load PC-CLASS with the simple CLASS command. He knows he will want to select Option (2) from the Opening Menu, so he presses the 2 key while PC-CLASS is loading. Moreover, he also knows his database will appear at the typ of the Dynamic Menu, so he will also press the Space Bar. The keyboard buffer holds 15 characters, so typing ahead in this fashion is quite practical. If he also knows ahead of time that the first thing he wants to do is add a column of grades, he can also press the 3 key after pressing the Space Bar. This technique skips over the Opening Menu, loads the most recent database, skips over the Main Menu, and proceeds to the prompt which asks him to specify the grade column. Similarly, if he was in the Main Menu and knew that he wanted to list the database on the screen, he could press 62, which will select but then skip over the LIST MENU. The power user will also make full use of the weighted average function by creating intermediate grade columns, which can be used in additional weighted average calculations. Frequently, there is no need to save such intermediate grade columns; in such a case it is easy to overwrite them later with another exam score. My wife likes to convert all numeric grades to letter grades, print them out, and then later overwrite the letter grades and keep the numeric grades for later use in computing the semester average, since a numeric grade always contains more information that a letter grade. Be sure to experiment a bit with grading on a curve, also. Many teachers have shied away from using a curve because of the additional calculations required. But with a computer to do all the calculations, there is no reason not to give it a try. <FF> GETTING OUT OF TROUBLE In designing PC-CLASS, I tried to build in methods to escape from errors caused by pressing a wrong key in response to menus and prompts. Usually the escape route involves the Esc key, or entering a zero when a number is called for. Data entry errors can be corrected by editing a grade column or by editing an individual student's record, and an entire student's record can be deleted easily. The alert reader may have noted, however, that there is no apparent mechanism for deleting an entire grade column. There is little need to do this, since it is always possible to overwrite the unwanted grade column with another set of grades, but if you ever feel a compelling need to delete a grade column, here is the way to do it. First, select the column in question after entering Option (3). Specify that you want to overwrite it, and then press the Esc key before entering any data. This will clear out all of the grades which had been present in that column, leaving them blank. But an entry for that column still exists in the .HDR file. To remove that, it will be necessary to exit from PC-CLASS and use your favorite editor to remove that column number, and its associated column label, from the file. Despite my efforts to anticipate errors and head them off before you are dumped out of PC-CLASS with a DOS error message, many users will probably find a way to crash the program. If they do not, the electric company is bound to do it for them sooner or later with an interruption in the power supply, or with a random surge which changes one or more bits in the program or data area. By keeping automatic backups of the database and header files as they existed at the time PC-CLASS was loaded, PC-CLASS ensures that you will lose only whatever data you have entered during the current session (or since last calling Option (7) to trigger the automatic backup). Still, some care is needed in restarting. First, log onto the Data Drive/Directory and enter COPY DBNAME.HBK DBNAME.HDR COPY DBNAME.TBK DBNAME.TXT Then, make a backup copy of the .HDR and .TXT files on another disk before logging back onto the Program Drive/Directory and restarting PC-CLASS. If you suspect that PC-CLASS itself has become damaged, recopy CLASS.COM (or CLASS87.COM) from the distribution disk before restarting. Remember that if you start PC-CLASS with a damaged .TXT or .HDR file, the good versions which had been saved as .TBK and .HBK files will be overwritten by copies of the damaged files, so ALWAYS make copies of the backup files before restarting PC-CLASS with possibly damaged database files. Finally, it you think you have encountered a bug in PC-CLASS, please send a copy of your Data Disk, along with a complete description of what happened. But first, try to repeat what happened, since a true bug is probably reproducible, whereas a crash resulting from a random current surge is not. <FF> USER SUPPORT: A TWO-WAY STREET In exchange for their financial support, Registered Contributors are entitled to a reasonable amount of support from the developer. I feel strongly that the best form this support can take is a well-designed, smoothly running program so easy to run that the user requires little or no assistance, and worked very hard to make PC-CLASS that kind of program. Nevertheless, I welcome comments and suggestions from Registered Contributors, and will respond as promptly as possible to WRITTEN requests for assistance if you have any problems using PC-CLASS. Feedback of this kind will inevitably make PC-CLASS a more useful program in the future. Note, however, that I stressed the word WRITTEN, and that the Copyright Notices all list my address but not my telephone number. There is a reason for this. There is a two- to six-hour time differential between Hawaii and the mainland, and I have found that being awakened at 3 am by a jangling telephone tends to ruin my day (as well as my night!). Moreover, I dislike using answering machines almost as much as I dislike making a long distance call and being greeted by one. So, for a one-man operation such as mine, operating from Hawaii, I do not feel that telephone support is feasible. If you have a really urgent problem, please say so in your letter, include your phone number, and suggest the best time to reach you. And if you succeed in tracking down my phone number and feel that you really must call, please keep the time differential in mind. Hawaii does not have Daylight Saving Time, so in the summer it is 3 am in Hawaii when it is 9 am on the East Coast.