Grading on a Tablet

Steven M. McKay

August 2, 2016

Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Gathering Required Pieces 22.1 Adobe Acrobat Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32.2 Python 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32.3 gradepages.py, converttojpg.py, byuexamheader.sty and tablet-

grader.sty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32.4 Ghostscript or Imagemagik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.5 Auto Multiple Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42.6 LibreOffice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3 Workflow 53.1 Preparing your Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63.2 Creating the AMC Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123.3 Grading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153.4 Post Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.4.1 Convert the pdf files to jpg files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.4.2 Run OMR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.4.3 Create the Spreadsheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4 Unusual Circumstances 204.1 Single sided or double sided exams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204.2 Multiple Sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204.3 Printer Setup on OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

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1 Introduction

This document outlines one possible way to grade exams on a tablet. I donot claim that it is the only way, or even the best way. It is a method thatworks for me. In order for me to be able to grade on my tablet, I have hadto deal with the following requirements:

• I need to be able to transfer the exams to pdf’s in an easy way.

• I need to be able to split the exams by page number, so that I cangrade one problem at a time, or one page at a time.

• I need some way for the scores of each exam to be recorded automati-cally.

• I need some way for the exams to be returned to the students.

There is no one piece of software that meets my needs. In some cases, I neededto write the software myself, as it did not appear to exist. In the sectionsthat follow, I hope to be able to document how an interested instructor canalso grade on an ipad (or any tablet - I have not verified windows tablets,but they probably work.)

2 Gathering Required Pieces

The following software is necessary to perform the above functions. (Theremay be some software that is not on this list, but is used as part of one of thesoftware packages below. Note that most software listed (except my scriptsand acrobat pro) is software that was developed on linux operating systems.They can be installed using the package system for that environment. If youare on a mac, most can be installed using macports (www.macports.org).You will need macports to install AMC anyway, so you might as well use itfor the other pieces. The caveat is that you can install LibreOffice directlywithout macports.

• Adobe acrobat pro. (This may not be necessary).

• A python 2 operating environment (probably 2.7+)

• gradepages.py, converttojpg.py, and tabletgrader.sty*.

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• Ghostscript and Imagemagik (Imagemagik may require ghostscript)

• Auto-multiple-choice (available at http://home.gna.org/auto-qcm/) Notethat AMC has other requirements. It normally runs on linux. I havea copy running on osx. I don’t know but I don’t think it can run onwindows. There are workarounds.

• LibreOffice (preferred) or OpenOffice.

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2.1 Adobe Acrobat Pro

Acrobat pro is needed for one function only: to batch print many separatefiles. This is necessary on OS X, because the underlying CUPS printingsystem does not know anything about printing presets, and so it is impossibleto specify two sided printing, or stapling on the command line. There maybe another way to do this, but on a mac, it seems problematic. In linux,you can use CUPS software (standard on most systems) for this task, so youprobably do not need Acrobat. Depending on the printer you use, you mayalso be able to avoid acrobat. I mention one workaround in the UnusualCircumstances section at the end of this document.

2.2 Python 2

Some of the scripts I have written are in python, so a working version ofpython will be needed on the computer you use.

2.3 gradepages.py, converttojpg.py, byuexamheader.styand tabletgrader.sty

These are scripts that I have written. gradepages.py is a script I wrote to splita pdf of exams into separate pages. I like to grade one page at a time, and thishelps my workflow. gradepages.py uses two packages: PyPDF and img2pdf.In order to use gradepages, you will need to install these packages first. Onceyou have a working python installation, you need to go to pybrary.net/pypdfand follow the instructions. (Note: There is a PyPDF 1.13 and a PyPDF 2.

1Starred items are packages that I have created myself.

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My code has not yet been updated to PyPDF 2, so you will currently needthe former.) You can easily install img2pdf using pip (if pip is installed).”pip install img2pdf” will give you the package on your machine. gradepagesalso uses sqlite3, but that is usually installed by default. converttojpg.pyuses ghostscript, and gradepages uses imagemagick.

converttojpg.py is a command that takes all pdf’s in the current directory,creates a jpg directory and converts the pdfs, putting the jpg’s in ./jpg. Thejpg files can then be sent to AMC directly. This is the only way I know totruly flatten a pdf that has been annotated on a tablet. However, it seemsfaster to convert to jpg and put the jpg in amc than to have amc deal withthe pdfs directly.

byuexamheader.sty and tabletgrader.sty are LATEXstyle files that simpli-fies common tasks and interfaces with AMC. They are not currently publiclyavailable, but I will send them to you with the other scripts. You need to putthem in a place where LATEXcan find it (which depends on the TEXsystemyou are using).

My scripts are not yet publicly available, so email me and I will sendthem to you.

It is recommended to put the python scripts in a location that is in yourpath, and make them executable. I do not know how to do that in Windows,but in OS X or Linux, move the file to /usr/local/bin and run chmod ugo+xfilename.py You should be able to run the file directly without writing pythonfirst.

2.4 Ghostscript or Imagemagik

These are needed to convert pdf files to jpg. Even though auto-multiple-choice takes pdfs, for some reason, it loses any marks made on a tablet, evenif the pdf is flattened first. So conversion to jpg saves the marks.

2.5 Auto Multiple Choice

This is the heart of the tablet grading system. It allows the instructor toselect a score for each problem in the pdf, and have the pdf compile thegrades automatically. To obtain AMC, go tohttp://home.gna.org/auto-qcm/ and click on the download link.

As far as I know, AMC currently cannot run on windows. It needs unixcommands and GUI elements. I am sure it can be rewritten to run on win-

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dows, but the authors do not have any desire to do so. It can run on many fla-vors of Linux, and there are pre-compiled packages in many distributions. Italso runs on OS X. (I have it running on my mac mini.) To run on recent ver-sions of OS X, you will also need to install XQuartz (xquartz.macosforge.org),as Apple is moving away from it’s native X11 server.

If you are running Microsoft Windows on your PC, you have severalchoices.

• Ask your CSR to set up a Linux server in the underground data center,and install AMC on that. (I have done this - talk to me if you want todo it.) This is less than ideal, but works.

• Install Parallels or Vmware on your pc and install linux on that.

• Set up your PC to dual boot windows and linux.

• Construct a usb key containing linux and amc that you can boot from.This scenario is probably the most convenient. Go tohttp://project.auto-multiple-choice.net/projects/auto-multiple-choice/

wiki/Using_AMC_on_a_PC_without_Linux_(with_a_live-USB_key)

to see the details.

2.6 LibreOffice

Auto multiple choice creates a spreadsheet of grades. This spreadsheet canbe written in openoffice format, csv format, or as a pdf file. The csv formatmeans you can upload the spreadsheet to Excel. However, if you choose todownload the spreadsheet to OpenOffice (or LibreOffice - this is my choicefor several reasons) then the spreadsheets created by AMC give you color-coded information at a glance (such as which questions were not graded, ifa student marked two answers when they were only supposed to mark one,etc). This makes it well worth it to download LibreOffice to your computer.

3 Workflow

In order to use this system to grade, you need to follow the following workflow:

1. Prepare the document and create an AMC project.

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2. Copy the exams.

3. Scan the completed exams.

4. Process the scans to obtain pdf’s for each question (that the instructorneeds to grade).

5. Convert the scans to jpg.

6. Send the converted jpg scans through AMC.

7. Within AMC, correct marking errors, calculate the grades, create thespreadsheet, and create an annotated exam for each student.

3.1 Preparing your Document

AMC is a robust and versatile system for creating exams. Its capabilities farexceed what I am going to outline here. For more details, look at the manual.In this section, I am going to discuss the creation of an exam with a multiplechoice section and a free response section. Each multiple choice question canhave one correct answer, or multiple correct answers. It is assumed at thispoint that the instructor knows how to write a document in LATEXand canuse a style file.

We begin, as with all documents created in LATEX, with a source file. Thestart of the file can look like this:

1 \documentclass [ 12 pt ]{ a r t i c l e }2 \usepackage [ box , completemult i ]{ byuexamheader}3 \usepackage{amsmath}4 \usepackage{enumerate}5 \usepackage{ s i u n i t x }6 \everymath{\displaystyle}7 \Course{Math 314}{Mul t i va r i a t e Calcu lus }8 \ I n s t r u c t o r {Steven M. McKay}9 \TestName{Exam 3}

10 \Date{June 12 ,13 ,14}11 \Stamp{NS}12 \Barcode {30319227}13 \newcommand{\ vct } [ 1 ]{\ langle #1\rangle}14 \newcommand{\vc } [ 1 ]{\ bf #1}

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15 \begin{document}16 \onecopy {72}{1718 \ f rontpage1920 \noindent{\bfseries I n s t r u c t i o n s }21 \begin{ i t em i z e }22 \item Do not wr i t e on the barcode area at the top o f each page ,23 or near the four c i r c l e s on each page .24 \item Mark the c o r r e c t cho i c e in the mul t ip l e cho i c e s e c t i o n .25 Each mul t ip l e ques t i on i s worth 4 po in t s .26 \item Show your work in the f r e e re sponse s e c t i o n .27 Correct answers without appropr ia t e work w i l l r e c e i v e no c r e d i t .28 \item Work in the f r e e re sponse s e c t i o n must be g iven in the29 space provided , or on the back o f the shee t the problem i s on .30 I f you use the back o f the page , make sure you wr i t e ”work on back”31 or equ iva l en t .32 \item S c i e n t i f i c c a l c u l a t o r s are a l lowed .33 Graphing c a l c u l a t o r s are not .34 No other e l e c t r o n i c dev i c e i s a l lowed .35 \end{ i t em i z e }36 \nextpage

Some of the instructions above are standard LaTeX commands. I will explainthe ones that are not.Line 2 loads the byuexamheader.sty package mentioned previously. Notethat the options box and completemulti are really options for automulti-plechoice.sty, which tabletgrader includes. I think using box creates betterspacing for questions. The other, completemulti, is an option for multiplechoice commands that I used on this exam. You do not need to use either ofthese options, and you could include other options from AMC if you wish.

byuexamheader is for the formatting of exams to be used in the BYUtesting center. It is not required. Everything in the above listing is for thebeginning of the exam. The following listings use commands in tabletgrader.If you do not use byuexamheader, then you will need to replace that packagewith tabletgrader in your preamble.

Lines 7-12 define front page material for the exam. Most of these com-mands should be self explanatory. On line 11, Stamp defines the testing

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center stamp to be used for this exam (RED - Exam will be scored by thetesting center, RED DO NOT WRITE - like RED, but the exams will bereused, so students cannot write on them, and NS - which means the testingcenter will not score the exam.)

Barcode gives the testing center barcode number. Latex will create apicture of the barcode on every exam. Because of the way AMC works,a separate exam is printed for each student. Each exam is unique. Themultiple choice answers, for example are shuffled for each student, and thequestions themselves could be shuffled also if the author wishes. Creatingone version of the test and then copying it for every student will be confusingto AMC (who will think the same student’s exam is being inputted manytimes). Thus, we need a picture of the barcode. Note: You will need to pickup a barcode from the office each time you create a test, putting the codein the Barcode command. Do not reuse the barcode number for a differenttest - get a new number each time. (You should also throw away the barcodesticker containing your number so some one else does not use it.)

The command onecopy is required by AMC. Everything corresponding tothe exam is inside of onecopy. Note that while we see an opening brace, wedo not see a closing brace. The closing brace is just before the end documentcommand. The number inside of the braces is the number of unique examsthat we need to create.

The frontpage command typesets the front page of the exam.The nextpage command gives a new page. It is similar to clearpage or

newpage commands, but acts differently in some situations.Now we can begin creating questions. I have three types of question envi-

ronments, one for multiple choice questions, one for truefalse questions, andone for free response questions (graded by the instructor). In my exams, Iusually lump the same type of questions together. This will be evident inthe next section of code. However, you could group questions by topic, somebeing multiple choice, some being true/false, and some being free response,if you wish. AMC does not have any ordering restrictions. The next list isthe multiple choice section. It uses the environment mcquestion to createquestions, and the choices environment for possible solutions. The mcques-tion environment has an optional argument (which can be anything excepta blank) that indicates the question has multiple right answers.

37 \ s e t m u l t i p l e c h o i c e {5}38 \noindent{\bfseries Part 1 : Mult ip l e Choice} Check the c o r r e c t

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39 response .40 \vspace { . 2 in }4142 \begin{mcquestion }{A−c en t r o i d } Find the c en t r o id o f the43 quarte r d i sk o f rad iu s 2 in the f i r s t quadrant . Choose44 the c o r r e c t answer f o r $\overline{x }$ .45 \begin{ c h o i c e s }46 \wrongchoice {$\ frac 43$}47 \wrongchoice {1}48 \wrongchoice {$\ frac 83$}49 \wrongchoice {$\ frac 4{3\pi}$}50 \wrongchoice {$\ frac 1{\pi}$}51 \ c o r r e c t c h o i c e {$\ frac 8{3\pi}$}52 \end{ c h o i c e s }53 \end{mcquestion}5455 \begin{mcquestion } [m]{A−statements } Which statements are always t rue ?

Mark a l l that apply .56 \begin{ c h o i c e s }57 \ c o r r e c t c h o i c e {Stokes theorem g i v e s us an a l t e r n a t i v e way to58 c a l c u l a t e the f l u x through a c l o s e d and bounded s u r f a c e .}59 \wrongchoice{The grad i en t g i v e s a d i r e c t i o n tangent to a l e v e l60 curve or l e v e l s u r f a c e .}61 \wrongchoice{ I f $\vc r $ r e p r e s e n t s the un i t t a n g e n t i a l on a curve62 with constant curvature , then $\vc r ’ $ i s a constant .}63 \ c o r r e c t c h o i c e {A v e l o c i t y f i e l d with a c u r l o f 0 i s c a l l e d64 i r r o t a t i o n a l .}65 \end{ c h o i c e s }66 \end{mcquestion}6768 \begin{mcquestion }{A−Greens} Use Green ’ s Theorem to r e w r i t e69 \ [\ oint C xˆ2y\ , dx+xy ˆ2\ , dy \ ]70 as a double i n t e g r a l over $R$ ( the i n t e r i o r o f the s imple71 c l o s e d curve $C$ ) .72 \begin{ c h o i c e s }73 \ c o r r e c t c h o i c e {$\ i i n t \ l imits R yˆ2−xˆ2\ ,dA$}74 \wrongchoice {$\ i i n t \ l imits R xˆ2+yˆ2\ ,dA$}75 \wrongchoice {$\ i i n t \ l imits R xˆ2−yˆ2\ ,dA$}

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76 \wrongchoice {$\ i i n t \ l imits R xyˆ2−xˆ2y\ ,dA$}77 \wrongchoice {$\ i i n t \ l imits R xyˆ2+xˆ2y\ ,dA$}78 \wrongchoice {$\ i i n t \ l imits R xˆ2y−xy ˆ2\ ,dA$}79 \end{ c h o i c e s }80 \end{mcquestion}8182 \nextpage

On line 36, setmultiplechoice is not an AMC command, but is defined intabletgrader. It sets the number of points that each multiple choice questionis worth. (Note that you can individually set different points for differ-ent questions, but you would need to use the AMC commands directly todo that.) Note that setmultiplechoice affects the score of mcquestion andtfquestion environments, and can be reset. Thus, if you have a multiplechoice section and a true false section, you can use setmultiplechoice morethan once.

On line 40, we begin the mcquestion environment. The AMC environ-ment for a question is question. mcquestion modifies question so that thepoints for the correct answer are taken from the setmultiplechoice command.The mcquestion environment takes one optional argument, and one requiredargument. The required argument is the name of the question. It is impor-tant to give each question a name, because if the questions are shuffled, theyneed to be listed correctly in the spreadsheet (which may not be the orderon a particular student’s exam). I like to preface multiple choice questionnames with “A-” and free response question names with “B-”, so that theyare listed together in the spreadsheet, but you do not need to do so. Note:Make sure you do not use a period in your name (such as 16.4, for example).The optional argument indicates whether there are multiple correct answers.Note that the first and third questions have only one right answer, so a stu-dent will get 5 points for choosing the correct answer, and 0 if they chooseany other answer. They will also get 0 if they mark more than one answer.On the second question, the student will get 5/4 points for each answer theymark or leave unmarked correctly (the number of points a question is worthdivided by the number of responses). Note that not checking a box thatshould not be checked will give them points.

Inside the mcquestion environment is the choices environment. This isa standard AMC environment. wrongchoice and correctchoice seem self ex-planatory. It does not matter in what order choices are listed, because AMC

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will shuffle them anyway. If you do not want them shuffled, then add theoption o to the choices environment:

\begin{choices}[o]

We end the multiple choice section with a nextpage, so that we can easilyseparate the the different sections on separate pages. The next section is thetrue-false section.

84 \ s e t m u l t i p l e c h o i c e {2.5}85 \noindent {\bfseries Part I I :} True/ Fal se . Mark each statement as t rue i f i t i s always t rue .

Mark the statement f a l s e i f i t i s sometimes f a l s e .8687 \vspace { . 2 in }8889 \begin{ t f q u e s t i o n }{B−t f 1} Stokes theorem a l l ows us to c a l c u l a t e l i n e i n t e g r a l s over a s imple c l o s e d curve in a d i f f e r e n t way .\end{ t f q u e s t i o n }9091 \vspace { . 5 in }9293 \begin{ t f q u e s t i o n } [ f ]{B−t f 2} Compress ible f l u i d s have no c u r l .\end{ t f q u e s t i o n }9495 \vspace { . 5 in }9697 \begin{ t f q u e s t i o n } [ f ]{B−t f 3} A double i n t e g r a l can be used to expre s s area .\end{ t f q u e s t i o n }98 \nextpage

The tfquestion environment is different from the mcquestion environmentin that the choices environment is constructed automatically. If an optionalargument is present, the correct answer is false. Otherwise it is true. Notethat the number of points per question has been reset for this section.

The next section is the free response section.

99 \noindent {\bfseries Part I I I :} Free Response . Show a l l work100 f o r each ques t i on in the space provided . {\bfseries DO NOT}101 wr i t e in the ad min i s t r a t i v e areas .102103 \begin{ f r e e q u e s t i o n }{C−centero fmass }{10} Find the cent e r o f mass o f104 an ob j e c t whose p o s i t i o n i s the t r i a n g l e with v e r t i c e s $ (0 , 0 )$ ,105 $ (2 , 0 )$ , and $(2 ,1 )$ i f the dens i ty i s g iven by $\delta (x , y)=y $ .106 \end{ f r e e q u e s t i o n }

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107 \nextpage108 \begin{doublepage}109 \begin{ f r e e q u e s t i o n }{C−Jacobian }{10} Find $\ i i n t \ l imits R xy\ ,dA$110 where $R$ i s the r eg i on in the f i r s t quadrant bounded between111 $xy=1$, $xy=2$, $\ frac yx=1/2$ , and $\ frac yx=1$.112 \end{ f r e e q u e s t i o n }113 \nextpage114 \end{doublepage}115 }116 \end{document}

The freequestion environment takes two inputs: the name of the ques-tion and the number of points to assign to it. The doublepage assignmentchanges the definition of nextpage so that a blank page is inserted after thepage in question. Due to the nature of AMC, the exams need to be printeddoublesided, so there are no empty back pages unless you create them. Whileempty back pages can be created in a number of ways, the doublepage envi-ronment will keep track of them so that pages can be split correctly later.

3.2 Creating the AMC Project

Once you have created your document, you need to start AMC. When AMCis started, you should see a window like this:

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Click on Project, then New. You will have an opportunity to start a newproject. Enter the name you wish to use, and click new project. You willthen see this screen:

If you have already created the file, click on file. otherwise, you couldclick on empty and write your file from scratch. If you click on file, you willhave a chance to upload the file to the project. Note that the name of the

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file does not need to match the name of the project in any way. Once youhave done this (uploading or creating the file), click on update documents tocreate the exams. Note that the number of exams you choose can be given inonecopy, or if you give onecopy 1 (for one exam), you can choose the numberof exams in AMC. If you have listed the number of exams in onecopy, youshould keep the number of papers at 0 on the front screen.

If there are errors, you will be given a partial list, and you can edit thesource code to fix them. However, the source code is no longer the code youcreated, but the code you uploaded to the project. To edit, click on EditSource File. Once you are ready, click on update documents again. Notethat your barcode pic must be copied to the project directory by hand. Youcan then click on Question to see your completed exam.

Once the exam is formatted to your liking, you can proceed to layout.Click on Layout detection, which records the position of boxes to be checked.

Before you print for the first time, if you are working in OS X, you willneed to change printing defaults. In the main AMC window, click on edit,then preferences. Scroll down the window until you see printing method.Change it to ”to files”, and click OK. Now when you create exams the pdfwill be created instead of trying to print directly. You will only need to dothis once.

To print, click on print papers, and select which exams you want printed(usually all of them). Then select print. This creates one exam per student.The exams are inside the pdfs directory inside your project directory. Youwill need to print each pdf file separately, using twosided and stapled options.You can do this using portfolios in Adobe Acrobat Pro and osx printingpresets. See the last section for an alternative.

You can now exit out of AMC. Click on project and save, then project andquit. The tests can now be taken to the testing center. Note that the testingcenter requires the correct stamp on each exam, along with the number ofthe exam. If you print the pdf files in order, each exam will be numbered inthe correct order, so there is nothing for the testing center to do. You shouldpoint this out, because if they stamp the exams, or write the exam numberon them, they could possibly stamp or write over one of the corner circles.This will prevent correct processing of that exam later.

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3.3 Grading

Once the exams are completed, you will get them back from the testingcenter (usually in the same order you sent them). There is some processingthat needs to be done before they can be scanned. The staple and any extrapapers (that weren’t part of the original exam) need to be removed. Thestaple can be removed easily, but if a student stapled extra papers to theexam, the second staple can be a problem. Thus, I tell students that scratchpaper will not be saved, and not to staple any extra papers to the exam.However, it doesn’t always work. It helps if you create enough space onexams so that the student doesn’t need scratch paper.

To remove the staple, cut off the corner with a guillotine paper cutter.You can usually cut two exams at a time. (Secretaries could do this task, aswell as the scanning.) We have a stack cutter that can remove the staples ofabout 20-25 exams at the same time. It cost less than 200 dollars. If you aregoing to do a lot of scanning, I highly reccomend it.

Once the staple is removed, then the stack of exams is scanned to pdf.Make sure you specify two sided booklet scanning and set the dpi to at least300 (higher dpi is ok but increases the processing time). The best option interms of file size is to scan in monocrome. (On our Sharp copier it is calledMono2.) If you are scanning at 300 dpi, I would also up the contrast (on ascale of 1-5, the normal is 3 and I usually go 4). If the stack is large you mayneed to divide it, and scan it in several piles. Note that AMC does not carehow many files you have.

At this point we are going to run the exams through AMC. This is doneby running the scans (in pdf format) through AMC directly. To do this, startAMC, then click the second tab, “Data Capture”. Click on ”Automatic”.You will be asked to select the scanned files. They do not need to be in theproject directory. Note the two options at the bottom of the window. Makesure ”copy to project directory” is checked. (It usually is). Then in the dropdown box, select ”Different answer sheets”. Click OK, and AMC will go towork importing your pdfs, splitting them and converting them to either pngor jpg or some other format, and copying them to the scan directory. AMCwill copy the files into your project directory and run marks recognition.When you are done, AMC will look similar to this:

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If everything was run through correctly, you will see no errors. If there areerrors, you can choose to fix them now or later on. (More about that later).Note that the information in AMC is incorrect, because the free responsesection is not graded yet. We now create the grading files. In a terminal, goto the project directory and run gradepages.py. This will create one pdf filefor each free response question, in a directory scans/tobegraded inside theproject directory. (Note that gradepages has several options. The defaultoption is to create one file per problem, and name the file from the problemname. Look at the .py file to see other options.)

I grade on an iPad, so I will outline the process in that case. However,there is software for android tablets that can be used as well. The app mustbe able to annotate pdfs with handwritten notes. There is probably softwarefor Windows that will work as well.

To grade on an iPad, I first upload the files to Dropbox or Google Drive.On my iPad, I have an app called Notability that can download from either

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of those cloud services. I download the files to Notability, and grade thepages there. (Notability annotates pdfs.) There are other apps that do this.Lately I have been trying an app called GoodNotes. Notability works wellfor me, but GoodNotes also works well, and has some minor advantagesover Notability for grading. However, Notability is superior as an overallnotetaking app. In order for the mark recognition system to work well, acertain percentage of the box must be filled in. Thus it is inadvisable to usetoo thin of a pen tool. Fortunately, notability and GoodNotes allow you tochoose many different sizes of pens. I usually use a medium thick pen tip tomark the box for the grade, and switch to a thinner pen if I want to make acomment.

To grade on an android tablet, our department uses Squid (formerly Pa-pyrus). Squid works well and can download and upload to dropbox andgoogle drive. If the tablet is a samsung with its smart pen, this system hasan additional advantage that the grader can mark with the pen and erasewith their finger, which is really convenient.

3.4 Post Processing

Once grades are assigned to each problem, files need to be run through AMCfor marking and scores. Before this can be done, however, the pdf needs tobe “flattened”. Currently, any marks made on the pdf from the tablet existas a separate layer. There are many reasons why this is done, but for ourpurposes, it prevents AMC from reading the marks. For some reason, whenAMC processes the pdf, the software removes the extra layer. This happenseven if you have flattened the pdf by conventional means. (On OS X, youcan use Preview to flatten files, for example). There is only one way that Ihave found that truly flattens the pdf. If you convert the pdf to png or jpg,you turn it into a bitmap image. Since AMC can use jpg or png files, thisdoes not really lengthen the process.

The post processing procedure is as follows:

1. Load the updated pdf files from your tablet back to dropbox or googledrive.

2. Convert them to jpg using converttojpg.py.

3. Load the jpg files into AMC.

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4. Run the optical mark recognition.

5. Create the spreadsheet and an annotated file for each student.

I will discuss each task in order.

3.4.1 Convert the pdf files to jpg files

Once you have uploaded the files to dropbox, you need to put them in adirectory by themselves. You can leave them on dropbox, but this operationcan quickly fill dropbox if you only have regular space. In a terminal, cdto the directory and run converttojpg. This will create a subdirectory “jpg”and put the converted jpg’s there.

3.4.2 Run OMR

If you start AMC back up (if you didn’t just leave it running for severaldays), you will need to open your project again. If you have an open projectfor another exam, make sure you save before changing projects.

Click on the Data Capture Tab. Click on the Automatic tab. Choosethe jpg files you just created. Click OK. This is an opportunity to see ifyou have any unrecognized scans and fix them, if possible. If you haveunrecognized scans and want to fix the score manually, you can click on the”Manual” button, and then select the page. Click on the mark that wasmissed, and click ok. Note you can do this in cases where students markswere unrecognized or they did not fill in enough of the box.

You may notice that under this process, the pages containing free responsequestions will be processed twice. This is ok. AMC will update with thesecond scan.

3.4.3 Create the Spreadsheet

Next, click the Marking tab. Click on Marks. This then processes the marks,associates them with a particular problem, and saves the score. There is amean score that appears after you do this. I don’t know what it is for. Ithas nothing to do with the mean of the exam. If you wish, you can click on“Look at Marks” to double check you are not missing anything. However, itis easier to check from the spreadsheet.

If you have a spreadsheet that has students byu id’s along with theirname, you can include it in the next section. (It needs to be in .csv format).

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You can associate the primary key with the BYUID code from the exam.This will allow you to create student files with their names later. In fact,you can create files with the correct format to allow them to be uploadedcorrectly in BYU’s learning suite. I will talk more about this below. Clickon Automatic, and the associations will be made. If any associations failed,you can click on manual to fix them.

Next, click the Reports tab. In the first section you can create a file withthe student grades in it. There are several options, openoffice, csv, and pdf.You could save to csv and then import the file into excel. However, I urgeyou to use LibreOffice or OpenOffice. If you choose openoffice format, thenwhen you click on export, it will give you a spreadsheet where mistakes oromissions are color coded. It is really easy to see where the problems are atthis point.

In the next section, you can create the files that will be returned to thestudents. AMC has a specific way it creates the names of the file usingthe exam number and (if known) the student name. However, you maywant to change this. The Learning Suite people have told me there is away to batch upload student feedback files for an assignment. To do this,the name of the file has to be very specific. Each file name has to be last-name firstname netID Examname.pdf . (Examname is the name of the itemin the learning suite spreadsheet.) If you have a column in your spreadsheet(in the Marking tab) that has the name for each file in the correct format,you can use that. For example, in my spreadsheet, I have a column titled“Student File Names”, so in the field next to file name model, I put(Student File Names)and AMC will use those for the file names. If you leave the field blank, AMCwill use its default model. Click on “Annotate Papers” and the student copieswill be created. Click on Look at papers and the folder will pop up. You nowhave a spreadsheet with the scores, and the exam files to return to students.

If you have email addresses in your spreadsheet, AMC will also email theexams to students, but it is not clear to me if that is FERPA compliant.AMC was developed by some teachers in France, and they may have lessstrict requirements.

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4 Unusual Circumstances

There are some needs that come up once in a while, but are not part of thestandard process. I will try to document them here.

4.1 Single sided or double sided exams

Depending on how the exam is structured, some instructors prefer to giveblank space on the back side of the exam in case the student needs moreroom. However, this is problematic when using AMC. If you want the blankpage to be included in the final student pdf, AMC needs to know aboutit. Thus, all exams are printed double sided, so as not to confuse AMC. Ifyou have a question or a set of questions that require a blank page on theback, you can use the doublepage environment. This changes the definitionof nextpage, so that any nextpage commands within the environment willtypeset a back page that AMC can deal with. Note that you can use thedoublepage environment multiple times.

4.2 Multiple Sections

If you are typesetting an exam for multiple sections, and they are each sepa-rate exams in the testing center, you can use the command \sectionsize{xx}.This will do two things: First when the test number equals the specified size,the test number is reset, so that exams start again from 0. Secondly, thenumber of the testing center barcode is incremented by one. It is crucialthat before you typeset the exams, that you get enough barcodes for each ofyour sections that are in a group. Give the first number in the tex file.

At this time, the same number of exams must be used for all sections.

4.3 Printer Setup on OS X

The difficulty with printing on os x, is that the printer needs to be configuredby default as stapled, double sided. If it is not, it is difficult to print manyfiles in batch unless you use portfolios in Acrobat pro. We have two printersin my department, a Sharp, and a Xerox. The following instructions workfor the sharp, but not for the xerox. If it does not work for your printer, youwill need to use Acrobat and portfolios.

To set up the printer, do the following:

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1. Go to system preferences and select ”printers and scanners”.

2. Create a new printer. Note that you are creating a printer queue forthe same printer that you already have, so make sure you give it adifferent name. You may need to have help from your computer supportrepresentative for this step.

3. Close system preferences.

4. Open a browser. In the url type localhost:631/admin. Click on Manageprinters

5. Find the printer queue you just created and click on it.

6. In the administration drop down box, select ”Set Default Options”.

7. Look for the options you want to change. For example, on the outputpage for the Sharp, I can set 2-side printing and staple.

8. Click on Set Default Options when you are done.

You now have a printer queue that will print 2 sided and stapled bydefault. All you have to do now is open the printer queue and then drag anddrop the files you wish to print to it.

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