[LON-CAPA-users] MSU coding for Scantron exam sheets

[H. K. Ng]

At 12:19 PM 10/3/2005, you wrote:
>I am trying to administer exams using lon-capa.  I have found the 
>document, "A Guide to Building Your Exam", to be very helpful and I'm 
>almost there.  Here's my problem:  In Scoring an Exam, you have the option 
>of uploading a Scantron data file.  What is the format for that Scantron 
>data file?  There is a wide range of Scantron sheets  available from 
>Scantron (http://www.scantron.com/) and thus there is a wide range of formats.)
>
>In the aforementioned instructions, it says, "In the format of the data 
>file section, use MSU with CODE in separate location for coded exams and 
>MSU without CODE for named exams."  So my question really is, "What 
>exactly is the MSU code?"

The MSU code is a line in the scantronformat.tab file located in 
/home/http/lonTab that specifies the output format of the scoring file from 
the scanning office. You probably can request your scanning office to 
produce a specified output. The format of the line goes something like this:

#name:description:code 
location:CODEstart:CODElength:IDstart:IDlength:Qstart:Qlength:Qoff:Qon:PaperID:PaperID
length:FirstName:FirstNamelength:LastName:LastNamelength

The fields have the following meaning: (column counts start from 1)
name - give this line a name like gwucode
description - this is what shows up in the drop-down menu like MSU Code, 
but call yours GWU Code
code location - don't believe it is used in current version put -1
CODEstart - the column location where the anonymous exam code (6 letters) start
CODElength - the length of the code = 6 if using the 6 letters
IDstart - the column location where the student ID starts
IDlength - the length of the student ID
Qstart - the column location of the first question
Qlength - the length of each question - normally correspond to the number 
of choices on the bubble sheet
Qoff - symbol for each bubble that is NOT bubbled, normally a blank space ' '
Qon - symbol for the bubble where the student has bubbled in - put say the 
number 1
PaperID - the column location of the number for scanned bubble sheet - 
printed by the scanning machine.
PaperID length - length of the paper ID
FirstName - column location of the first name
FirstNamelength - length of the first name
LastName - column location of the last name
LastNamelength - length of the last name

Here are some examples:
msunocode:MSU without any CODE:none:0:0:57:9:77:10: :1:5:5:51:1:41:10
msucode:MSU with CODE in separate location:letter:69:6:57:9:77:10: 
:1:5:5:51:1:41:10
fsucode:FSU Randomized Exam Form:-1:47:6:54:9:80:10: :1:1:5:45:1:30:14

The output file from the fsu scanning office looks something like this:
00001                        SMITHY         N IJGGBH 
111111111                      1       1          1          1           1
00002                        SMITHY         K FECCJA 
032345679                 1                1         1     1       1
00003                        DOE  ASHLEY      EBDEBB 
156345678                      1     1           1        1          1

-hk