Suggestion: collect average score data from CS 'Grades' system

[NeatNit]

Many Computer Science course only upload final scores to Upgrade. This means that Exam A, Final A, Exam B, Final B scores are missing in the data.

Averages are available in the computer science system, https://grades.cs.technion.ac.il. For example, in course 234118 for Winter 2019-2020:

234218:

Whereas the histogram database for both of these includes only the final final score. Example of the latter: https://github.com/michael-maltsev/technion-histograms/tree/master/234218/201901

Obviously the averages aren't as nice as full histograms but this data would be very useful to gather regardless.

BTW the whole histogram system you've built is absolutely awesome. Thank you!

[NeatNit]

Some more info:

1. All grades & averages for all courses in a particular semester are available in the Grades tab in the system. Note that you can switch semesters using the yellow left/right arrows at the top center of the screen.

2. The aforementioned Grades tab has a (very basic) histogram available in a mouseover 'button'. There's only one per course, and it seems to be only for courses that have scores in Moed B (from my limited samples at least). It's not clear which grade this is histogram of. See screenshot below.

3. Averages and histograms only seem to be kept for less than a year. Winter 2019-2020 is available but summer 2019 and older are gone as of this writing.

4. Some courses have an underscore in the score title (exam_a, final_a, etc.) while others don't (exama, finala, etc.). This is also visible in the screenshot. There may be more variants.

[michael-maltsev]

Thanks for the detailed post. I indeed was wondering why many CS courses have only a final grade in the grades system.

While it's possible to make a script, similar to the one I did for grades, for GR++, I'm not sure that the overhead is worth it:

• An overhead for me: developing and maintaining the script.
• An overhead for students: students will have to run two scripts to share the data.

Even if I develop such a script, I'm afraid that the second point will discourage students from running the second script, or worse, from sharing any histograms at all.

In addition, there are other downsides that you listed:

• No consistent naming, so the implementation is going to require some manual work.
• The fact that the grades are only available for a year.

It would be great if the CS staff would publish exam grades to the grades website in addition to GR++. Perhaps it's possible to talk to somebody about it.

[NeatNit]

Yes, some of your points did cross my mind, and I figured that creating another script is not going to be worth it. I didn't mention that because my approach when opening GitHub issues is to put in all the factual information and let the project maintainer(s) figure out whether it's worth acting upon, because I might not know all the factors.

You're definitely right, it would be best if the CS dept would just upload grades to the Technion grades system like everybody else. Cheesefork histograms would not be the only benefit, there's also a lot of benefits to just having all the grades from all courses in one place.

If I were you I'd try to get in contact with ASAT about this. They'd know the right way to approach the CS faculty about this, and many of them are guaranteed to be cheesefork users so I'm sure you'll find someone to talk to and be able to explain your reasons.

Edit: accidentally clicked "comment and close", whoops!

[NeatNit]

Ah! Look what came in the mail today: https://techmail.technion.ac.il/01922577429f90d4c63db24304f38f550502b794.pdf

דווח ציונים: ציונים יפורסמו לא יאוחר מעשרה ימים (קלנדריים) מיום הבחינה. הציונים ידווחו במערכת ה Upgrade בלבד

So looks like this problem will resolve itself. However, I worry that perhaps the CS faculty won't get the message...