How to put clicker marks on portal
by Jason Harlow.
Using
Blackboard and i-clicker versions current as of October 25,
2012:
- Blackboard
Learn version 9.1 service pack 8
- i>clicker
v6.2.1
If you are at U
of T, using i-clickers in class, and posting marks using
portal.utoronto.ca, here is how you do it. Note that in
my class, I ask all students to go to
www.iclicker.com/register and register their clicker ID with
their alphanumeric UTORid.
Step 1: Download
the latest class list from portal.
- Log-in to
portal.utoronto.ca. Click on the course under My
Courses.
- Click on the
"Grade Center" button in the Control Panel box in the
left-panel.
- Click on the
"Full Grade Centre" button in the drop-down menu which
appears.
- Click "Create
Column", name it "Clicker marks" or something, put in the
maximum number of "Points Possible", and click "Submit" (you
are going to use this later to upload the clicker marks)
- Click on
"Work Offline", which is on the right, then "Download" in
the drop-down menu which appears.
- Click
"Submit" , then click "Download" , then Save the file.
The file will save with a ".XLS" extension, but it is
actually a tab-delimited text file, not an Excel
spreadsheet.
- Click OK.
Step 2: Make a
"Roster.txt" file for igrader and put it in the correct place.
- Open the file
you just saved, which is called
"gc_CourseName_fullgc_date-time.xls" with Excel.
- Click File -
Save As - Comma Separated Values .csv file. Name it
"Roster.csv" and save it in the folder where you run
iclicker, in the sub-folder "Classes", in the sub-sub folder
for your class.
- Delete Column D and
all columns to the right of D
- Delete Row 1
- save again,
and exit Excel.
- Rename
Roster.csv to Roster.txt (this will overwrite the empty
Roster.txt file that iclicker automatically puts there)
Note, your Windows may not show file extensions, in which
case the file would just be called "Roster". In this
case, click on Tools, View, and uncheck the box for "Hide
extensions for known file types". Now you should see
the .csv and be able to rename it to .txt.
Step 3: Run igrader.exe.
- Run igrader in the same folder where you run iclicker
- click "Sync...", click "Continue"
- click "Ignore All" if any mismatched students appear.
Note, the first time you run this, the number of registrations
is usually about twice the number of students you have,
because each clicker ID counts as a registration and each
student ID in your roster file also counts as a
registration. After they get matched that number should
decrease to closer to the actual number of students in your
class.
- click a little button with an upward pointing arrow on it,
which, if you hover your mouse over it, says "Export", check
all the boxes, choose where you want to put it. Name it
"UploadFile.csv"
- Close igrader
Step 4: Upload the clicker marks to portal.
- open igradeout.csv, from step 3, with Excel (You should have
a good look at this file, to make sure the marks look
okay. Every student from your Roster.txt file should be
there, sorted by UTORid. The ones with no registered
clicker found just get zeros. Note that there may be "orphan
clickers" at the bottom of the list, which are clicker IDs
that voted, but didn't have student IDs that matched with any
IDs from your Roster.txt file.)
- open the file you saved in step 1, which is called "gc_CourseName_fullgc_date-time.xls"
with Excel
- sort the gc_CourseName_fullgc_date-time.xls
rows based on UTORid, so it is in the same order as the
students in igradeout.csv.
- Copy and Paste the column of clicker marks you want from
igradeout.csv into gc_Coursename_fullgc_date-time.xls in the
column you made in step 1 called "clicker marks". Be
sure to only copy the rows of your students, not all the
orphan clickers at the bottom. Also, don't over-write
the header-row in the destination file, because portal will
use this in its upload.
- exit Excel, saving the "gc_CourseName_fullgc_date-time.xls" file
in the same format it was originally in, which is
tab-separated values. Excel might complain that it has
the wrong extension or is incompatible or whatever, but just
ignore these complaints and keep it in the same format.
- Back in the portal grade centre now, click "Work Offline",
and "Upload", and in the Attach Local File part click
"Browse", and choose that "gc_CourseName_fullgc_date-time.xls" file
you just saved. Click delimiter type "Tab" and click "Submit"
- For upload, uncheck everything except the clicker marks you
just put in there, then click "Submit"