An Informative Computerized Laboratory Records Maintenance System
Karel Hartman and Ann Margaret Fischer University of Victoria Victoria. B.C. Canada V8W 2Y2
mean and course mean for the listed experiments, their naximum mark. the student's accumulated total, the maximum total possi'ble, and the student's accumulated percentage. The lists will also indicate if the student was absent (A), was excused (E) in which case hisher max. total possible is corrected, failed to hand in a report (N), received areport back for recalculation or rewriting (R), or passed the laboratory course the previous year (P). In addition to the above comments, the program has the optional possibilities to exclude one or more non-zero grades from the calculations of the students accumulated total in a certain course and to incorporate information on missed experiments because of university holiday closure. At the University of Victoria an update file from the Registrar's Office is available, which is used to incorporate the student's university status in the printouts. The last information tells the reader immediately if e.g. a nttrdent .. ~.~ has dronned . . the course (DR) or withdrawn from university (1). If such an update file is not available the proeram can of course be used without this additional information. Practice has shown that although any number of exoeriments can he orinted out, inclusion of the last three exberiments is suffiiient to detect any mistakes that may have been made during the transfer of marks. I t will also keep the printout limited to one page per section. The weekly printout provides students, instructors, and professors with an up-to-date record. This record expressed as ~ercentagemark would previously not be known until the end of the term or semester. Where average marks in a certain section seemindy start to deviate too much from other sections, possiblyhue to the varying grading standards of instructors, a significance test can be done to determine if this is indeed the case. If so. corrections can be sueeested earlv bv the coordinator. A less' reliable but quicker iceck to seeif section is truly good or bad is to print a Midterm or Christmas examination mark side by side with the students laboratory mades. All toeether this weeklv information eives the students Lore performance awarenessbecause theyinow where they stand and allows laboratory Table 1. Excerpts from thesummary of Laboratory Perfortnance in Chemtrtry 124 by Lecture and Laboratory Sectmns instructors and professors to ,ww,s,o, ,2. - ?,, ~ . ~ ~ me.-~ u E~z m3.mT.i identify students who need
Everyone involved in the coordination of multisection laboratory courses, instructed by a variety of graduate teaching assistants, postdoctor$ fellows, and regular lahoratory instructors, is only too familiar with the many difficulties which will besieee the unaware coordinator. Elimination of grading discrepancies between sections and delays in the madioa of laboratow. rewrts are long standing problems . in mo; univ&sity chemistry departmenis and they require the continuous attention of the coordinator. MacMillan and Epsteinl have reported a computer program, which will put all laboratorv sections in a course on the same grading scale; however, it has the disadvantage that it will not easily distinguish sections that are significantly better or worse than others. Computerization of student records has the distinct advantage in that it keeps students and faculty informed and up to date about the performances in the !aboratory. This information can be supplied in the form of a weekly printout, which contains us much relevant information as possible. The success of such a service can be measured from student and faculty response to a simple questionnaire on this matter. Students may speak up when they feel that the program is used too much as a watchdog on performance. The program described in this article has been used t o nrocess lahoratorv and other mades for about 900 first and second year chemistry students in five different courses. I t is written in P L 1 and needs up to 512 K storage on the IBM 3701145.768 K, O S N S 1system. The program also requires 3 taoe drives and 1disk drive. The weeklv com~uting - time is abo;t 250 s. On reouest the nromam Drovides three different weekly a summary for each course (Table I), a section performance list by student name for use by the instructor and a section performance list by student registration number (Table 2) for ~ o s t i n gin the laboratory during the time that this section i;in session. The weeklyperformance lists give the actual marks for the experiments performed, the section
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The lahoratory instructors report the laboratory marks for each experiment weekly on computer printed coding sheets (Table 3). The ~ u n c h e d data c k d s for each' experiment, which come with the coding sheets are later used to feed the marks into the computer. The transfer of marks and comments from the coding sheets onto the prepunched computer cards can be assigned to a single person or to the individual section instructors. For 900 students this takes maximal 3 man-hours a week using a programmable card punch like the IBM 29. The program accepts up to 5 courses, 5 lecture, and 20 labVolume 54, Number 8, August 1977 1 507
Table 2. Excerpts from the Section Performance Lists by Student Name and by Student Registration Number, Showing the Results for the Last Three Experiments and the Overall Percentage
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oratory sections per course, 25 experiment marks and 5 other marks ner course. and a virtuallv unlimited number of students per section. he program dill also print an alphabetical list or a list by ascending registration numher of all student records per course or per lecture section, and any kind of lecture or laboratory marks or combination of these. At year end (or earlier) histograms for all courses can he printed by the program, whereby the total accumulated laboratory marks for all the students in a certain course are plotted versus the frequency. The program documentation and an address where the program compilation may be obtained are available from one of the authors (KH).
Table 3.
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' ~ a e ~ i l l aJ. n ,G., and Epstein, M. J., J. CHEM. EDUC., 50,459 (1973). 508 1 Journal of ChemicalEducation
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