The Perl Toolchain Summit needs more sponsors. If your company depends on Perl, please support this very important event.

NAME

Grades::Groupwork - A way of working as a team in a competition or school

SYNOPSIS

        use Grades;
        use Grades::Groupwork;

        my $grades = Grades->new( league => $league );
        my $classworkgrades = $grades->classwork;

DESCRIPTION

A superclass for the various ways a group (as opposed to pair) can work together and achieve a result.

Grades' Classwork role delegates its methods to one of a number of approaches. Some popular approaches, or forms of curriculum, are subclasses of Groupwork, like Groupwork::Responsible, Groupwork::NoFault. Other popular non-Groupwork approaches are Compcomp, and Jigsaw.

Keywords: gold stars, token economies, bean counter

ATTRIBUTES & METHODS

classMax

The maximum score possible in individual lessons for classwork.

beancanseries

The different beancans for each of the sessions in the series. In the directory for each session of the series, there is a file called beancans.yaml, containing mappings of a beancan name to a sequence of PlayerNames, the members of the beancan. If beancans.yaml cannot be found, a file called groups.yaml is used instead.

beancans

A hashref of all the beancans in a given session with the names keying the ids of the members of each beancan. The number, composition and names of the beancans may change from one session of the series to the next.

Players in one beancan all get the same Groupwork grade for that session. The beancan members may be the same as the members of the class group, who work together in class, or may be individuals. Usually in a big class, the beancans will be the same as the groups, and in a small class they will be individuals.

Players in the 'Absent' beancan all get a grade of 0 for the session.

Rather than refactor the class to work with individuals rather than groups, and expand some methods (?) to fall back to league members if it finds them in the weekly files instead of groups, I decided to introduce another file, beancans.yaml, and change all variable and method names mentioning group to beancan.

beancan_names

A hashref of all the beancans in a given session with the names of the members of each beancan.

allfiles

The files (unsorted) containing classwork points (beans) awarded to beancans, of form, groupworkdir/\d+\.yaml$

all_ided_files

The files containing classwork points (beans) awarded to beancans, of form, groupworkdir/\d+\.yaml$ keyed on the \d+.

all_events

The events (an array ref of integers) in which beans were awarded.

lastweek

The last week in which beans were awarded. TODO lexicographic order, not numerical order.

data

The beans awarded to the beancans in the individual cards over the weeks of the series (semester.)

card

Classwork beans for each beancan for the given week

active

Given a session, returns the active beancans, ie all but the 'Absent' beancan.

files

Given a session, returns the files containing beans awarded during the session according to the league.yaml session key. The files are of form, \d+\.yaml$

weeks

Given a session, returns the weeks (an array ref of integers) in which beans were awarded in the session.

week2session

        $Groupwork->week2session(15) # fourth

Given the name of a week, return the name of the session it is in.

names2beancans

A hashref of names of members of beancans (players) and the beancans they were members of in a given session.

name2beancan

        $Groupwork->name2beancan( $week, $playername )

Given the name of a player, the name of the beancan they were a member of in the given week.

beancansNotInCard

        $Groupwork->beancansNotInCard( $beancans, $card, 3)

Test all beancans, except Absent, exist in the beancans listed on the card for the week.

beancanDataOnCard

        $Groupwork->beancansNotInCard( $beancans, $card, 3)

Test all of the beancans, except Absent, have all the points due them for the week. Duplicates the check done by the Card type.

merits

The points the beancans gained for the given week.

absences

The numbers of players absent from the beancans in the given week.

tardies

The numbers of players not on time in the beancans in the given week.

Grades' Cooperative Methods

The idea of Cooperative Learning, giving individual members of a group all the same score, is that individuals are responsible for the behavior of the other members of the group. Absences and tardies of individual members can lower the scores of the members who are present.

Also, grading to the curve is employed so that the average classwork grade over a session for each student is 80 percent.

payout

How much should be given out for each beancan (except the 'Absent' beancan) for each week in this session, so that the total score of each player over the session averages 80?

demerits

The demerits that week. calculated as twice the number of absences, plus the number of tardies. In a four-member beancan, this ranges from 0 to 8.

favor

A score of 1 given to beancans with no more than 6 demerits, to prevent beancans who were all there but didn't do anything (ie had no merits and no demerits) from getting a log score of 0, and so getting a grade of 0 for that week.

maxDemerit

The max demerit that week. achieved by the beancan with the most absences and tardies.

meritDemerit

Let beancans with no merits, and no demerits get a score greater than 1, so the log score is greater than 0. Let beancans with 3 or more absences and 1 tardies not be eligible for this favor, but get at least 0. Let other beancans get the number of merits - number of demerits, but also be eligible for the favor, and get a score of above 1.

work2grades

The work (ie merits - demerits) of the individual beancans for the week, as a percentage of the total work of all the beancans, determines the payout of grades, which should average 80 over the sessions of play. I was logscaling grades. I am now not doing that.

logwork

The points given by the teacher are log-scaled to prevent active students from taking all the payout, and the other students getting very low grades. There may be better ways of grading to the curve than using log scaling. The log of one point is 0, which results in a grade of 0 for that week for that beancan.

grades4session

Totals for the beancans over the given session. TODO Why '+=' in sessiontotal?

playerGrade4session

Total for individual ids out of 100, for the given session

totalPercent

Running totals for individual ids out of 100, over the whole series.

Grades' GroupworkNoFault Approach

Unlike the Cooperative approach, GroupworkNoFault does not penalize members of a group who are present for the absence of other members who are not present or tardy. Instead the individual members not present get a grade of 0 for that class.

Also, no scaling of the grades (a group's merits) takes place.

card

Classwork beans for each beancan for the given week. Not TortCard difference to Groupwork's card method.

absent

The players absent from each beancan in the given week.

tardy

The players tardy from each beancan in the given week.

points

The merits the beancans gained for the given week, except for those members who were absent, and who get zero, or tardy and who get 1. Keyed on player id.

sessionMerits

The merits the beancans gained for the given session, with the Absent beancan getting zero. Keyed on beancan.

grades4session

Totals for the beancans over the given session, keyed on individual names.

total

Totals for individual ids, over the whole series.

totalPercent

Running totals for individual ids out of 100, over the whole series.

AUTHOR

Dr Bean, <drbean, followed by the at mark (@), cpan, then a dot, and finally, org>

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-grades at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Grades. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your bug as I make changes.

SUPPORT

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc Grades

You can also look for information at:

COPYRIGHT & LICENSE

Copyright 2010 Dr Bean, all rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.