DCS grading programs

`gen`

Gen calculates the values of marks that are derived from other marks. That is, it calculates "calculated marks" from "raw marks", in the terminology of the description of the file format.

Usage

gen [selection options] [files]

Details

Gen calculates all the marks for all the students in the grades file, except those who are excluded by the selection options.

If no files are specified, input comes from the standard input and output goes to the standard output. Otherwise, the values of marks stored in the named files are updated.

How to calculate marks for submission

When you need to calculate final marks for a course so that you can submit them to the Faculty of Arts and Science, you have some problems (which I imagine affect instructors in other faculties, and indeed other universities):

Some students for whom you do have records have nevertheless dropped your course.
The Faculty is demanding marks for students who appear to have dropped your course, in the sense that they don't have all the usual marks. For example, they may not have written the examination.
The Faculty is not demanding marks for students who appear to have completed all the expected work in your course.

Students who have dropped your course -- the ones in point (1) -- really cause no problems at all. The Faculty isn't asking for their marks, and you have probably already set their drop indicators anyway. If not, you can do it now, and then start your calculations with the command

        gen -d myFile

where we assume your grades file is called "myFile".

But when you try to use gsub to put your marks into the Faculty's mark submission file, you discover that you have students who may have dropped the course in fact, but who officially have not dropped it, and for whom you must submit grades. These are the students from point (2), and you can arrange to calculate their marks either by removing their drop indicators, or -- better -- by picking a flag characer such as 'x' to flag them as apparent dropouts whose marks you have to submit. Then calculate the marks like this:

        gen -d -ix myFile

You can use the same set of selection options with gsub.

And the students from point (3)? Those are the ones who did all the work you required in the course, but somehow never enrolled. You can handle these cases in two ways:

Do nothing now. Eventually they'll figure out there's a problem, and the giant administrative machine will request marks from you.
Figure out their marks now, and submit it on the special form you can use for this. The Undergraduate Office has these forms.

I admire people who do the second thing, but have to admit that I myself do the lazy first thing.

Changes since the previous version

There are two major changes:

you no longer have to specify various options about how marks are calculated.
you can use selection options to avoid calculating marks for some students.

Gen was a major source of irritation in the previous version, and it is hoped that these changes have improved the situation. See "How to calculate marks for submission", above, for how to proceed with minimal irritation.