BoldComment

A grading tool to save instructors time...

                           ...with greater feedback to students

Installation is easy:

(1) Download and install the Adobe AIR Program

For Windows (EXE, 9 MB)

For the Macintosh (DMG, 10 MB)  (requires version 10.4 or newer)

Adobe® AIR™ is a system runtime that allows rich Internet applications to run on your desktop without being connected to the Web. For more information visit the Adobe web site.

(2) Download the BoldComment Grading Program

Download BoldComment  (both Macintosh and Windows)

In Windows: Double-click on the boldComment.air file to install the program in your "Program Files" directory.
You will see an option to put a shortcut on your desktop and at the end of your Start/All Programs menu.

If your system renames the file to boldComment.zip, change the filename to boldComment.air

On a Macintosh: Double-click on the boldComment.air file to install the application in your "Applications" directory. After the file is installed double-click on the boldComment.app file to run the program.

Demonstration Videos

Installing BoldComment

Once you've downloaded the BoldComment.air file you simply have to double-click on it in order to do the installation. A dialog box will come up named "Application Install". The publisher is shown as "unknown" because I do not have the $200 to annually purchase a certificate. There is no spyware or any malicious programming in this program, just plain, ordinary code. Click on the "install". You can have the application start automatically after it is installed by checking the "Start application after installation box". On my Macintosh you can see it is going into the Applications folder. If you click on the folder icon you can choose where you want the program to install.

Click on "Continue" and BoldComment installs and starts.

Starting a New BoldComment Project

Here is the opening screen for BoldComment. There's an area for comments on the entire project. The program keeps track of the total points as well as the file name and directory that is currently being used.

You can start a new file by selecting File/New from the menu bar. BoldComment starts out with a single objective and comments that go with that objective. If you click on the plus "+" signs you can add more comments. And, the minus signs "-" will delete the comments. The program always keeps at least one comment and one objective, so if you try to delete the last one, a warning box will display.

The same is true of the objectives. You can add more objectives by clicking on the plus "+" key and remove an objective by clicking on the minus "-" key.

In this manner you can build on your comments as you grade several papers.

I have a file already set up for Jeremy, so let's take a look at it. Use File/Open, and then browse to where the file is located. I saved that in My Documents under BoldComment. Usually I have a class folder containing folders for each student. All the BoldComment files are kept in their folder for the duration of the semester.

Click on the "Done" button. The small up arrow "^" button will allow you to go up to a higher folder/directory.

You can see that I already have several comments typed in. This is one of the beauties of BoldComment: You can type in lots of information for the student and you don't have to retype it for each student. All you have to do is check or uncheck the box.

At the top you can see my overall comment for Jeremy. I told him he did a great job. You can see what directories are being used and the current filename.

The first objective is to utilize an html element correctly on the page. Jeremy did an excellent job so he got an Excellent and five points. He also did really well utilizing the head element correctly and he got an excellent on that too. But, let's say we are correcting another student's paper and that student didn't do as well. For that student we would uncheck the excellent box and take away a point, giving the student a detailed description of what is incorrect. If there was another comment to be added we would simply click on the plus "+" sign and a new comment would appear. We could type in "minus one... This element was missing". The beauty of this is you only have to type in a comment once and you can reuse that comment for all subsequent papers as well as from semester to semester. Now, let's say we want to have five points for this objective. So we can add in a new comment and say "Total number of points" and set the point value to five. The student will lose the one point for the missing item, giving him or her a total of four points for that objective.

Looking at the next objective we can see there is a total of five points and the student missed two items, each costing one point. Also notice that you can utilize HTML code in the comments. Here a phrase is emphasized using the bold tags, start bold <b> and stop bold </b>. That's two simple HTML tags that you can use that will make this text bold on the final output to the student.

Creating HTML Code for Content Management Systems such as Moodle, D2L, and BlackBoard

Another powerful feature of BoldComment is its ability to make a web page quickly and easily that can be loaded up on a CMS (Content Management System) such as Moodle, D2L, and BlackBoard. To do this, make sure you have all appropriate comments checked and that the points are correct. Click on Share/HTML on the menu bar and the HTML code will display that you can upload to the CMS. If you want to see what the feedback to the student will look like, you can click on the Web View button. The HTML uses the output.css file located in the same file as the BoldComment program*.

Notice that the only comments that show are the ones that were checked. The total points for the project display at the bottom of the feedback page.

Go back to the Code view by clicking on the Code button. Copy all of the code by clicking on the Copy button. All the HTML code goes into the clipboard. Go into another application, such as a feedback window in the CMS you are using and paste the code using CTRL-V (think of a wedge inserting the code where the cursor is located.)

Going back to the Web view you will notice that the phrase that had the start bold tag <b> and the </b> tag shows up on the student feedback page in bold. If you know any HTML you can add it in as part of the comment text.

 

*If you know CSS you can easily change the output.css file to format the student's feedback HTML any way you'd like. Just make certain that the finished CSS file is named output.css and that it is located in the same folder as boldComment on your computer.

Reusing Comments As You Grade

Another way that BoldComment can save time for you is its ability to save detailed comments from student to student. Let's say out next student is Sue. We will be using Jeremy's BoldComment page and use File/Save As from the menu bar. Select the folder you want the new file to be save in and type in a file name. BoldComment uses XML files which are plain text. It is helpful to identify these if you use the extension .xml. Click on the Done button in the lower right to return back to the main input screen. You will see the new file name and directory showing at the top of the page.

As you go through Sue's work you can see she did excellent on the first objective. The second objective was done correctly so you can uncheck the minus items. You can change the "Total Points Possible" to "Excellent" (or make a new comment for the "excellent" ).

She also did very well on the third objective so you can quickly uncheck the minus comments as well as add a "Very Good" to the Total Points comment.

Don't forget to go up to the top comment and personalize it for Sue. Do a File/Save . If we want to put the comments out on her web space we can click on Share/HTML. We can view it really quick using "Web View", then return back to the Code view and click on the "Copy" button. Position your cursor in the window of her web space using CTRL V. Click on "Done" to return to the main input screen and you are ready to grade the next project.

Uninstalling BoldComment

If you ever need to uninstall BoldComment, return back to the downloaded file named boldComment.air (or download a new copy from the web site at http://peterkjohnson.com/boldComment) and double click on it. A dialog box will display giving you the option to uninstall the program (the middle button). Click on it and then click on Finish and BoldComment is gone.

This project was completed as part of my Master's thesis project and is available to all faculty free of charge. The program was written using Adobe Flex and AIR.
The videos were created using Jing, a free program from TechSmith.

Please send comments and suggestions to peter.johnson@southcentral.edu .