LosOjos Posted October 20, 2010 Posted October 20, 2010 Hi all, I've just finished the first version of the Exam File Split program. The program was born out of necessity: SIMS does not support multiple exam centre numbers, and Capita refuse to provide support. At the same time, exam boards do not want split site schools to use a single centre number, as this means transferring exam papers between sites: if a paper gets mis-laid/lost/stolen, that exam has to be canceled for the entire country. Understandable really! So I have created a simple program which will take the exam entry or amendments file that your MIS produces and split it for you based on a set of configuration files you provide it. There are instructions in the readme as well as example configuration files, but if you need any help setting it up let me know. Oh, and a disclaimer: Use this software at your own risk, I accept no responsibility for any missed entries, incorrect file formats or exploding PC's that may occur from your use of this software! That being said, if you need any help feel free to contact me. Currently there is only myself using it and I'm waiting to hear back from one other person how they get on with it, so your feedback is welcome. If anybody would like to look at the source code (it's nothing special but some people prefer to know exactly what a piece of software is doing) then let me know and I'll make it available. Exam File Split 3
LosOjos Posted October 22, 2010 Author Posted October 22, 2010 UPDATE: I've now added in more validation routines, so you will now get warnings if the total number of students in your original submission file doesn't match the total number split out with reasons why this could happen (still the same link as above)
GREED Posted October 22, 2010 Posted October 22, 2010 Nice work. Not come across the problem before but sounds like a simple solution to a real big problem for schools. 1
LosOjos Posted March 17, 2011 Author Posted March 17, 2011 Don't know if anybody has ever actually used this, but just in case: I've just made a small update to the program, and the new version can be downloaded from the same link provided in the opening post. Changes: Error messages slightly rewritten for clarity Student ID's are now zero padded to make them the required 4 digits long, this was to solve an issue with Excel stripping preceding zeroes from ID numbers prior to saving as CSV
LosOjos Posted March 17, 2011 Author Posted March 17, 2011 Would you be willing to share the source code? Yeah no problem, do you want me to email it to you or make it public?
matt40k Posted March 17, 2011 Posted March 17, 2011 Yeah no problem, do you want me to email it to you or make it public? Public would be good, perhaps register it as a open source project on www.sourceforge.net or www.codeplex.com then use SVN. PS: I'm starting to think we need to band together to release EduGeek OpenSource or something
LosOjos Posted March 18, 2011 Author Posted March 18, 2011 Public would be good, perhaps register it as a open source project on www.sourceforge.net or www.codeplex.com then use SVN. PS: I'm starting to think we need to band together to release EduGeek OpenSource or something It's an extremely simple project, not worth setting up a project page for at the moment I don't think. I will however package it with a GNU license and put it on my Dropbox, I'll post the link later on. Of course if EduGeek were to start an "umbrella" project I'd contribute it
plexer Posted March 18, 2011 Posted March 18, 2011 If you wish to contribute it as an edugeek project it can then have it's own section under the projects section but you may not want to do that. Alternatively google code is good for hosting your code. Ben
LosOjos Posted March 18, 2011 Author Posted March 18, 2011 For simplicity's sake (and the fact it doesn't appear to be all that popular!) for now I'm just going to provide the zipped C#.net project, but if it does pick up interest a bit (which it might do with a seemingly growing number of schools merging), then I'll look at starting an EduGeek project here to give people a good base for help. The source can be downloaded from here: Exam File Split (Source) From now on, if I make any changes, I'll replace that ZIP with the updated source.
NorthernSands Posted March 20, 2011 Posted March 20, 2011 This looks interesting. We have multiple centre numbers (one for each board, it seems). We're not a split site, though, I think it's just the way it was originally set up and the exam boards don't want to merge the numbers! Does this program support more than two centre numbers? If so I might have a word with our Exams Officer. It'd save him the job of changing the centre number in Exams Organiser to produce the entries. We'll try tackling the exam boards again, but this may be an alternative if that fails. Thanks for this!
vikpaw Posted March 20, 2011 Posted March 20, 2011 @northernsands - i believe that's exactly the kind of situation this program was designed for. Give it a try.
NorthernSands Posted March 21, 2011 Posted March 21, 2011 @VikPaw. Thanks (and for the invites). I will have a look. When I have time. Inshallah! It might have to wait until the next exams season.
LosOjos Posted March 21, 2011 Author Posted March 21, 2011 This looks interesting. We have multiple centre numbers (one for each board, it seems). We're not a split site, though, I think it's just the way it was originally set up and the exam boards don't want to merge the numbers! Does this program support more than two centre numbers? If so I might have a word with our Exams Officer. It'd save him the job of changing the centre number in Exams Organiser to produce the entries. We'll try tackling the exam boards again, but this may be an alternative if that fails. Thanks for this! Hi NorthernSands, although the program has only ever been tested on two site schools, there is absolutely no reason it shouldn't work for a school with dozens of sites. When you first run the program, there are some simple settings that must be tweaked to tell the program which exam centre numbers you are using. You then create a CSV file for each centre containing the candidate numbers of all the candidates that should be entered against that centre number (if you use ranges; as we do; you can just enter all the numbers in that range). You create all your entries in your MIS as per usual (under any centre number you like), then feed the generated file in to my program, which will parse it and split it in to seperate files ready to send to the exam boards. It currently works with entry files and amendment files. If you do decide to give it a go, feel free to PM me for my email address and I'll provide all the support I can if you need it
LosOjos Posted March 21, 2011 Author Posted March 21, 2011 Just a quick note - made a slight change to the README today to make things clearer and also to include details of the GNU license I'm releasing under - the program itself (and the source code) have not changed.
vikpaw Posted March 21, 2011 Posted March 21, 2011 (edited) @VikPaw. Thanks (and for the invites). I will have a look. When I have time. Inshallah! It might have to wait until the next exams season. bukrah? Edited March 21, 2011 by vikpaw :p
NorthernSands Posted March 22, 2011 Posted March 22, 2011 bukrah? The way things are going at the moment, almost everything important is exactly that!
LosOjos Posted October 21, 2011 Author Posted October 21, 2011 Just a small update: you will now get a message telling you which students (if any) could not be matched to an exam centre upon generation. Source & program both updated, links remain the same: Exam File Split Source
iansimpson888 Posted October 21, 2011 Posted October 21, 2011 Is this a slightly different situation than a single site being registered with exam boards using different numbers, as a SIMS user I thought this was possible anyway?
LosOjos Posted October 21, 2011 Author Posted October 21, 2011 Is this a slightly different situation than a single site being registered with exam boards using different numbers, as a SIMS user I thought this was possible anyway? This is to deal with schools who use multiple centre numbers (usually split site schools, but not necessarily always). SIMS (and maybe other MIS, I've only used SIMS) only allows you to use one centre number in Exams Organiser. While it is theoretically possible to do one set of entries, change the centre number then do the other, this makes it extremely easy to end up entering a student on the wrong site. I was told when we came to this situation that Capita would not support us if we continued to use multiple centre numbers, whilst at the same time being told by the exam boards we must use separate centre numbers for separate sites to ensure the secure delivery of papers. 1
iansimpson888 Posted October 21, 2011 Posted October 21, 2011 I see, so different centre numbers from a student perspective. I knew that SIMS could do different centre numbers on a per board basis but that would have been for the entire student population. So this is a way of splitting the student entries for a board as if being sent from two different centres. Thanks. I'll have a play as this will be a useful tool to bear in mind given the number of schools I support!
LosOjos Posted October 21, 2011 Author Posted October 21, 2011 So this is a way of splitting the student entries for a board as if being sent from two different centres. Yep, exactly that, it uses CSV files containing lists of candidate numbers to perform the split so is easily configurable. Here for instance our exams officer just runs off a SIMS report filtered by Reg group as we have different reg groups on each site, takes seconds!
LosOjos Posted January 7, 2013 Author Posted January 7, 2013 If anybody is still using this, it'll soon be removed from Dropbox but is available via my website: Exam File Split ← Geek Josh
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now