Student Records and Assignment Management Systems

• give - assignment submission, autotesting and marking system

• sms - student records management system

give & sms Installation

give and sms are interconnected. Create give environment and sms database in the class account as follows:

1. ssh into the class account with X11 forwarding: ssh -Y

   sms is a tcl/tk app that requires X windows. Running tcl/tk app with X windows is slow. Better ways are:

   • VNC on a CSE login server

   • VLAB

2. Run the installation script:

   % give-install -new

   % ~give/stable/bin/give-install -new

   • if ~give/stable/bin is not part of $PATH

   % ksh give-install -new

   • if your login shell is zsh

   % give-install -new <term>

   • if the term is not the same as the system-wide term

3. The installation perform the following tasks:

   • Create $WORK ($HOME/<term>.work e.g. ~/20T3.work)

   • Create give.spec (if doesn't exists) in

     • $HOME (does not override existing one)

     • $WORK (does not override existing one)

     (read about give.spec)

   • Create .giverc in $HOME (overrides existing one)

   • Create sms database ($SMSDB) under $WORK (can be postponed)

   • Download student enrolment data (read about importing nss data below)

   • Add $SMSDB environment variable to $WORK/.giverc

4. The installation can be paused before sms database is created.
   • Create the database by running sms directly:
   • e.g.

   • sms ~/20T3.work/20T3db.sms

   • or

   • sms

     • using the value stored in $SMSDB

   • Resume the installation with this command:

     give-install -update

5. Download student enrollment data
   • Add course records
     • For combined courses, create the database in the primary class account, add a record for each course.
   • Add student records

     • Top menu bar: Student → Add Student Records → External Source

     • or second menu bar: Add from NSS

       From NSS (without classes) - The download will not overwrite class changes in sms

6. If there are classes in NSS, an enum field (tut, lab or tut_lab) will automatically be created in sms after the above downloads.

   Enter this field when asked for a group field by the give-install script. This field is used by give for assignment submissions.

   (Read about &subkey and &subgroup)

7. After installing give, update the give environment:

   % . ~/.giverc

   and insert the line above to the class account's .profile, if not already.

8. Check that $HOME/give.spec contain the correct configuration for the current term.

   • Look out for &period is not still set to a previous term. Example

     &period=19T3

9. Check the environment variables: $GIVEPERIOD, $WORK, $SMSDB

   % echo $GIVEPERIOD