An analysis automation tool to avoid repetitive tasks while grading student assignments that have been handed in through the Blackboard learning system.

For example:

• Extract hundreds of .zip files
• Sort the files per assignment, student
• Create statistics: number of students, late assignments,...

• Download assignment files from Blackboard (e.g. gradebook_ART_EA-38302_Assignment1_2013-06-11-20-50-44.zip).
• Place these .zip files in the "input" folder.
• Run the program: python -m blackboard_analysis_tools.
• Wait... (about 10 seconds when processing around 100MB of assignments) (time will vary).
• Open the "output" folder to see the results (all files sorted per student, a summary, logfile, ...).

1. Install Python:

• Windows: go to "Python.org", download and install the latest version

2. Install "blackboard_analysis_tools" using the Python package manager

• Open a console window and go to the place where Python-pip is installed: normally "c:\Python34\Scripts"
• Run: pip install blackboard_analysis_tools

• Install Python (aptitude install python on Debian)
• Run: pip install blackboard_analysis_tools

• Download the source package from Github or the Python Package Index at: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/blackboard_analysis_tools/
• run python setup.py install

• Create two folders: "input" and "output"
• Place the .zip files that you downloaded from Blackboard in the input folder
• Run the tool: python -m blackboard_analysis_tools
• Wait for a couple of seconds
• Check the output folder for all the student assignments

• Currently only tested on Linux, Windows 7 & Windows 8
• The program was created with other OS users in mind, so it will probably work on most recent operating systems where Python runs.

If not stated otherwise blackboard_analysis_tools is distributed in terms of the MIT license. See LICENSE in the distribution for details.

• Post issues to GitHub http://github.com/jeroendoggen/blackboard-analysis-tools/issues.

1. Scan for .zip files
2. Extract the .zip files
3. Scan for .txt files (these contain the metadata that describes the student reports/assignments)
4. Analyse the .txt files
5. Create a folder for each student
6. Move all the files to the correct folder (including those with filenames that have been 'mangled' by Blackboard)
7. Write some statistics: a list of all students that have handed something in
8. Write a summary of the process: number of students, number of assignments, number of 'mangled' files,...

0.0.4:

• Windows compatible
• Modified the default analysis options to 'AP University College'

0.0.3:

• Cleanup temp folders
• Debug code for timing analysis
• Parallel processing (no speedup)
• Python 3.3 compatible
• Partially Windows compatible
• Sorting output folders
• Print build summary
• Detect late files

0.0.2:

• Detect 'mangled' files
• Statistics: logfile, summary, student list
• using input & output folders
• Code cleanup: pep8, pylint

0.0.1: Basic features

• Extract .zip files
• Create student folders
• Move files to folder