BBGradebookOrganiser/README.md

BBGradebookOrganiser

Blackboard Gradebook Organiser

Description

Blackboard Gradebook Organiser is a tool for organising a downloaded gradebook with assignment submissions from Blackboard Learn. The submission files are organised per student, by extracting the student number from the submission file names and creating a directory per student. Any compressed files (.zip, .rar, .7z) are extracted into the student's directory, with any remaining files submitted individually also moved into the student's directory.

Features

• Extracts, and organises per student, the content of submitted compressed files with extensions: .zip, .rar, .7z
  • Detects invalid/corrupt files
  • Doesn't extract macOS system generated files (ignores directory __MACOSX inside the compressed file)
  • If a compressed file is found inside any submitted compressed files, it is organised into the student's folder and the script displays its location so it can be extracted manually
• Deletes each compressed file after successful extraction into student directory
• Organises per student any remaining individually submitted files
• Checks and extracts any comments from the student submission generated text files
• Checks if any compressed files (from the contents of the submitted compressed files) have been extracted and organised per student
  • The path of any extracted and organised compressed files will be printed (they need to be extracted manually)

Instructions

Download gradebook

• Go to the course page on Blackboard
• Go to Grade Centre -> Full Grade Centre
• Find assignment and click on the arrow for more options, and select Assignment File Download
• Select all (click Show All at the bottom first, to display all users) and click submit to generate the gradebook zip file
• Wait for the generated download link to appear, and click to download

Extract gradebook

• Extract the downloaded gradebook in a new directory inside BB_gradebooks

Run script

• Before running the script for the first time, install the required packages
  • python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
  • If running on Linux/Mac, you also need to have unrar installed in order to be able to extract .rar files
    • sudo apt install unrar for Linux
    • brew install rar for Mac
• Provide the name of the directory (from section Extract gradebook above) as an argument when running the script
  • python organise_gradebook.py GRADEBOOK_DIR_NAME
• While running, the script displays on the terminal information and stats about the gradebook submissions and files

Post-run

• All submission files can be found - organised in directories per student number - in directory BB_submissions under the sub-directory named after the gradebook name provided when running the script
  • e.g. python organise_gradebook.py GRADEBOOK_DIR_NAME creates the directory GRADEBOOK_DIR_NAME inside BB_submissions
• Each student directory contains the student's extracted and individually submitted files, and the text file generated by Blackboard with the submission (which also contains any comments left by the student)
• All comments found in the gradebook are extracted in a text file in BB_submissions, with the gradebook name as prefix
  • e.g. AssignmentX_comments.txt will be created for gradebook AssignmentX
• Compressed files are deleted after successfully extracting and organising the contents
  • any invalid/corrupt compressed files are moved into folder __BAD__ inside the gradebook directory

Notes

The Blackboard generated name for submission files must follow the pattern ANYTHING_STUDENTNUMBER_attempt_ANYTHING