Crowdmarker

Crowdmarker is a Python script to assist TAs in grading work on the Crowdmark platform. Crowdmarker allows you to quickly insert comments by moving the cursor to where you would like to insert a comment and hit a key to insert and save a comment with its associated points.

Crowdkmarker also has mapped the F key to save a booklets score and move to the next unmarked booklet, and the G key to enter a perfect score and move to the next unmarked booklet.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3
• A TA or Professor level account on Crowdmark
• A Linux distro with root privileges. These instructions will use Debian compatibles OSs but can be changed for any distro.
• (Optional) Python venv is shipped with Python 3 but for some reason some distros separate it out into a separate package, such as python3-venv on Ubuntu/Debian. Sorry Linux users, but you will have to install this if you haven't already.

Installation

• Install or upgrade to Python 3. Clone this repository, and move into it
• git clone https://github.com/marcoscz1995/Crowdmarker.git
• cd Crowdmarker

Configure your OS for Evdev (see here for more info)

• sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-pip gcc
• sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Configure your OS for PyAutoGui (see here for more info)

• sudo pip3 install python3-xlib
• sudo apt-get install scrot python3-tk python3-dev

(Optional, but recommended) Create and activate a virtual environment.

• python3 -m venv crowdmarker-env
• source crowdmarker-env/bin/activate

Install the required packages

• pip3 install -r requirements.txt

If you get errors like Failed building wheel for XXXX you might need to install wheel

• pip3 install wheel

Determine keyboard event number

Run keyboard_event_determiner.py (This script will run for three seconds, so be quick!)

• sudo python3 keyboard_event_determiner.py
• Click any key on the keyboard you wish to assign keys to.

You should see output like this in your terminal: /dev/input/event7. Record the number you see at the end of the output. In this case I would record 7 as my keyboard event number.

Determine keyboard key codes

Run keycode_determiner.py

• sudo python3 keycode_determiner.py

Click on the keys you would like to assign comments to. For example if you would like to assign the letter A to a comment, click on A and you should see in you terminal something like KEY_A. Record this.

-Hit Control+C to end the script when you have all your desired key codes.

Note: you should avoid the already assigned shortcut keys in Crowdmark (L, H, J, K, E, N, P, T, Z, C, X, Q, S, D), as well as the letters F and G as those are already mapped as described earlier (these can however be changed/removed in lines 85-88 in crowdmarker.py).

Tip: when selecting keys I suggest choosing those on the left hand side of the keyboard. This way you can select comments with your left hand and choose where to insert them using your mouse with your right hand. I find this the most efficient use of this script.

Insert user inputs into Crowdmarker

Insert your comments, points, and associated keyboard keys and event to crowdmarker.py

• open crowdmarker.py in your favourite text editor
• in line 155 change insert your max score here to the questions max score that you will be marking
• in lines 156,157 change the keys or leave as default for moving to the next booklet and enterring a perfect score.
• in line 158 change enter your keyboard event number to the number you got from running keyboard_event_determiner.py
• in lines 158 insert your comment, points and key code you want to assign to it that you get from running keycode_determiner.py. Add as many comments as you have keycodes. Just follow the format of ["comment", point, "key code"].

Note: if you want to put latex code that starts with reserved python string formating such as '\f' or '\n', just add 'r' before the start of the comment. For example:

• [r"the correct answer is $$\frac{1}{2}$$", -2, 'KEY_R']

Start marking

Once you are satisfied with your comments sign into Crowdmark, go to the question you want to mark and run the crowdmarker.py file.

• go to your desired Crowdmark question (do this before running the script so as to not have the script insert text into the login fields)
• python3 crowdmarker.py
• move the cursor to where you would like to insert a comment
• click the associated key for that comment

The comment will then be inserted.

Happy Crowdmarking!

Note: due to how the script works, do not move the cursor while the comment is being inserted as the comment will not be saved or the points will not be added. Also, the comment cannot be posted too close to the margins of the questions as the points can be recorded wrong.

Turn off the script

When you are done marking or want to turn off the script

• go to the terminal and press Contrl+C or hit the Escape key from anywhere to end the script.

To deactivate the virtual environment just type in your terminal

• deactivate

Contributing

If you would like to improve this script or have an idea to make it better, please post it to the github issues page. If you would like to develop it I will gladly accept pull requests. This script currently only works on Linux and I have tried many things to get it to be cross platform but I cannot find a method to replace Evdev. I will be more than happy to push my failed attempts on a branch to use other modules but they are most likely dead ends as they enter infinite loops of hitting the keys and activating the script which calls the keys and so on and so forth.

Note: if you plan on using Selenium to improve the script consider that because Crowdmark is written with Ember.js which uses dynamically generated attributes, there are many issues that make inserting comments difficult. In particular, when a long comment is inserted the page will jump to the next question.