Grade Access Instructions

This page describes how to use the program I have written to view your grades as well as how to use it to submit code to me. You can check your grades on the web interface, but you can't submit code there. In order to submit code you have to run the actual application. The two look identical, but without signatures the applet doesn't have the ability to read your hard drive.


Running the Program

If you don't need to submit code and you are just logging it to check your grades and see the feedback that was provided, you can use the web interface and skip down to "Login and Usage" for directions. If you need to submit code then you will have to run the application (you can also check grades this way). I have made this easy on the lab machines. All you have to do is run the executable file /users/mlewis/Local/HTML-Documents/Grades/GradeCheck.sh. This will start up the system for you and you can proceed with the Login and Usage directions below.

Where things get more difficult is if you are trying to do this from your room. Because the application is a graphical one, you can't run it through putty and you might have problems running it through cygwin (you'd have to start X-windows to even try). For this reason you will need to have Java 5.0 installed on your machine. To check on this, bring up a command prompt and type the command "java -version". If you don't have 5.0 then you should go to java.sun.com and download it (get the J2SE version). You can download just the JRE if you never want to program in Java, but having the J2SDK can be nice if you are considering ever doing that (and you will if you major). It is also possible that you can have Java 5.0 installed on your system, but not set in your path. If you know where it is installed you can type in the full path name (this applies for runnin the program in the next paragraph). For example, you might need to type in something like "\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_04\bin\java" instead of just "java".

Once you have Java installed on your machine you should download the file http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~mlewis/Grades/GradeCheck.jar. This file has the compiled Java code that you need to run for doing a submission. It might be updated occasionally so if you are using an old version and having problems try getting a newer version. Once you have that go back to the command line and do to the directory where you saved the jar file. While you are there type in the command "java -cp GradeCheck.jar SubmissionApp rmi://titania.cs.trinity.edu:1099/SubmitServer". If that doesn't work replace the 1099 with 1100 and try again. 1099 is the normal RMI port, but the newer RMI registry has given me some problems so I might have to move it sometimes if that continues. That should bring up the login box and you can proceed with the directions below.

If you are in Eclipse it using the arguments that are given above.


Login and Usage

When you log into the system for the first time you should give it your normal login name and use your student number for your password. You will be asked to confirm that you are logging in for the first time and you should enter your student number on this dialog for both fields requested. This will log you into the system. All subsequent logins will just use your username. You can change your password for this system while you are logged in from the menus.

Once you have logged in you will be presented with a small window that lists all the courses you are part of under this system. To view a class either double click it in the list or click it then the "View Section" button at the bottom. This will bring up a window with a little table that shows all of your grades for that course. If you click on a grade you can use the menu options to get other information. Double clicking will also bring up other information. For most grades this extra information might include notes to you that were typed in by the professor.

In the case of grades related to code submissions double clicking will bring up a window for submitting code. You should select the files you want to submit then click submit for grading. At this point the other buttons have not been implemented. If the submission is successful a dialog box will come up telling you so.