User Guide

• Introduction
  • About this application
  • Objectives of this guide
  • Using the guide
    • Navigation
    • Formatting
      • Callouts
      • Syntax highlighting
      • Keys
• Quick start
• Graphical User Interface
• Features
  • General
    • List all students : list
    • Find a particular student : find
    • Clear all students: clear
    • Display the help menu: help
  • Attendance
    • Mark attendance: markAtd
    • Unmark attendance: unmarkAtd
    • List Attendance: listAtd
  • Participation
    • Clarifications on Participation points
    • Insert participation points: insertPP
    • List participation points: listPP
  • Assignments & Submissions
    • Preface
    • Add Assignment: add_asgn
    • Delete Assignment: delete_asgn
    • Grade Assignment: grade
    • Ungrade Assignment: ungrade
    • List all assignments: list_asgn
  • Class List
    • Create a class list: create_class
    • List students in a class list: classlist
    • List all students in the application: list
    • Add a student: add_student
    • Edit a student: edit_student
    • Delete a student: delete_student
    • View class statistics: class_stats
  • Alarm
    • Schedule an alarm : add_alarm
    • Remove a scheduled alarm : delete_alarm
    • List all scheduled alarms : list_alarms
  • CSV Parser
    • Import data in CSV format: import
    • Export data in CSV format: export
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary

Introduction

About this application

Teaching Assistant Assistant (TAA) is a desktop app for managing teaching assistant activities, optimized for use via a Command Line Interface (CLI) while still retaining the benefits of a Graphical User Interface (GUI).

TAA provides a one-stop solution that meets the following teaching needs of a TA in just one single application:

1. You can easily track student attendance and grades using just a keyboard, eliminating the need for multiple clicks.
2. You can even view grade statistics without the use of a dedicated data analysis application!
3. You can schedule alarms that help you manage your time during class. Gone are the days of you unknowingly spending too much time on a single question during tutorial or forgetting to mark students’ attendance at the end of class.
4. You can save the troubles of manually importing and exporting data into and out of the TAA application, thanks to our CSV parser!

Say goodbye to the hassle of managing teaching assistant tasks and hello to increased efficiency with TAA!

Objectives of this guide

This guide is written to provide comprehensive instructions for users to use TAA effectively and efficiently. More advanced users can also benefit from this guide by following the additional information provided in each feature.

If you are a teaching assistant who can type fast, this guide is for you!

Using the guide

Navigation

To use the guide, you may wish to take a look at the table of contents at the start of the page. You can click on the relevant sections you wish to visit, and the hyperlink will bring you straight to the relevant section.

Alternatively, you may wish to use the built-in search function in your browser (Ctrl + F) to look for specific keywords relevant to your query.

Formatting

Aside from the usual text format, this guide includes certain special formats that are used for different purposes.

Callouts

Callouts are identified by a coloured box containing some text.

Note

Note: Contains important information on how the application is designed to be used.

Information

Info: Provides information that is not essential, but may be useful (especially for advanced users!).

Tip

Tip: Provides recommendations on how you can use the app more effectively.

Warning

Warning: Describes actions that may cause the application to function unexpectedly.

Syntax highlighting

Text contained within a grey background are used to denote either of the following:

• commands that can be entered into the command bar
• file names
• command line commands, to be run in the terminal of the host machine

Keys

Keys such as A B C are used to denote keys on the keyboard that can be pressed to perform certain things.

They can also be used to denote keys that should be held together, at the same time. For example, Ctrl

• F indicates that the user can press both the Ctrl and F keys together to perform a given action.

Quick start

1. Ensure you have Java 11 or above installed in your Computer.

2. Download the latest taa.jar from here.

3. Copy the file to the folder you want to use as the home folder for your TAA.

4. Open a command terminal, cd into the folder you put the jar file in, and use the java -jar taa.jar command to run the application.
   A GUI similar to the below should appear in a few seconds. Note how the app contains some sample data.
   
   

5. Type the command in the command box and press Enter to execute it. e.g. typing help and pressing Enter will open the help window.
   Some example commands you can try:

   • list : Lists all students.

   • add_student n/John Doe cl/T01 cl/L02 : Adds a contact named John Doe to the Class Lists T01 and L02.

   • delete_student 3 : Deletes the 3rd student shown in the current list.

   • exit : Exits the app.

6. Refer to the Features below for details of each command.
7. Use ↑ and ↓ to navigate through command history.

Graphical User Interface

Info: Each Class List consists of 0 or more Student Cards.

The purposes of each component, as labelled in Figure 2 above, are described in Table 1 below.

Note: To send your command, first type in your command in the command box. Then, press the Enter key to send it!

Info: The commands below will operate on the active class list being displayed in the Class List display. If the students being displayed are not the ones you wish to update, do remember to update the active class list before continuing.

Features

Note: The commands stated below will follow the syntax defined in Table 2. Come back here if you’re ever confused on what the symbols mean!

Tip: Parameters can be specified in any order!

Info: If a parameter is expected to be passed in only once, but is specified multiple times by the user, only the last occurrence of the parameter will be taken by the application.

Info: Extraneous parameters for commands that do not take in parameters will be ignored.

General

These commands are either used to interact with students across all class lists, or just general commands that are not related to any of the sections below:

• list
• find
• clear
• help

List all students : list

Lists all students tracked by TAA, across all class lists.

Format: list

Find a particular student : find

Find students across all classes whose names contain any of the specified keywords.

Format: find KEYWORD [MORE_KEYWORDS]...

• The given KEYWORD/MORE_KEYWORDS are not case-sensitive.

Examples:

• find Alice Bob Charlie
• find bAlAKRiSHNan

Note: A given keyword must exist as a whole word in a name for it to be considered as a match. e.g. The keyword bala does not match the name Roy Balakrishnan as Bala is not the full word Balakrishnan.

Clear all students: clear

Removes all students currently being tracked by TAA.

Format: clear

Warning: This will delete all student records in TAA. Only use this command if you are sure you want to start off with a totally empty student list.

Display the help menu: help

Displays the help menu.

Format: help

Attendance

For attendance, you can make the following calls:

• markAtd
• unmarkAtd
• listAtd

Mark attendance: markAtd

Marks the attendance of a student for that week
Format: markAtd STUDENT_INDEX w/WEEK_NUMBER

STUDENT_INDEX: A positive integer that represents the index of student as shown in Class List display portion of TAA GUI
WEEK_NUMBER: A integer between 1 and 12 (inclusive of both 1 and 12)
Marking the attendance for a week that is already marked will result in a message This student's attendance has already been marked.

Examples

• markAtd 1 w/1 (marks attendance of student with index 1 for week 1)
• markAtd 2 w/1 (marks attendance of student with index 2 for week 1)

Unmark attendance: unmarkAtd

Unmarks the attendance of a student for that week
Format: unmarkAtd STUDENT_INDEX w/WEEK_NUMBER

STUDENT_INDEX: A positive integer that represents the index of student as shown in Class List display portion of TAA GUI
WEEK_NUMBER: A integer between 1 and 12 (inclusive of both 1 and 12)
Unmarking the attendance for a week that is already unmarked will just result in the successful unmarking message being displayed Attendance unmarked successfully!

Examples

• unmarkAtd 1 w/1 (unmarks attendance of student with index 1 for week 1)
• unmarkAtd 2 w/1 (unmarks attendance of student with index 2 for week 1)

List Attendance: listAtd

Lists the attendance of a student from week 1 to week 12
Format: listAtd STUDENT_INDEX

STUDENT_INDEX: A positive integer that represents the index of student as shown in Class List display portion of TAA GUI

Examples

• listAtd 1 (list attendance of student with index 1)
• listAtd 2 (list attendance of student with index 2)

The listed attendance will be such that every line will be in the format Week NUM: [PRESENT]
where NUM represents the week number, and PRESENT takes the value of X is the student is present, and empty otherwise

Example

Week 1: [X]
Week 2: [X]
Week 3: [X]
Week 4: []
Week 5: []
Week 6: []
Week 7: []
Week 8: []
Week 9: []
Week 10: []
Week 11: []
Week 12: []

The above example shows that the student is present for week 1,2,3 and absent for the rest of the weeks

Participation

For participation, you can make the following calls:

• insertPP
• listPP

Clarifications on Participation points

• Participation points is represented by an integer from 0 to 700 (inclusive of both 0 and 700)
  Except for the special situation where the attendance is not marked, then the participation points will be -1
  If users are inserting participation points, only an integer from 0 to 700 (inclusive of both 0 and 700) is allowed
• When the attendance of a student for a week is marked (not present -> present for the week)
  TAA will automatically change the participation points of the student from -1 to 0
• Unmarking a student’s attendance automatically changes the participation points of a student to -1
• The participation points displayed in Class List portion of the TAA GUI is the average points, which is calculated using Total participation points / Number of weeks present
Total participation points is the sum of all participation points for weeks when the student is present
  Number of weeks present refers to the number of week present from week 1 to week 12

Insert participation points: insertPP

Inserts participation points of a student for that week
Format: insertPP STUDENT_INDEX w/WEEK_NUMBER pp/POINTS

STUDENT_INDEX: A positive integer that represents the index of student as shown in Class List display portion of TAA GUI
WEEK_NUMBER: A integer between 1 and 12 (inclusive of both 1 and 12)
POINTS: A integer between 0 and 700 (inclusive of both 0 and 700)

Participation points can only be inserted for a week when the attendance is already marked.
Violation of this will result in a message Mark the attendance of the student first before inserting points!

Examples

• insertPP 1 w/1 pp/200 (inserts participation points of 200 for week 1 of student with index 1)
• insertPP 2 w/1 pp/300 (inserts participation points of 300 for week 1 of student with index 2)

List participation points: listPP

Lists the participation points of a student from week 1 to week 12
Format: listPP STUDENT_INDEX

STUDENT_INDEX: A positive integer that represents the index of student as shown in Class List display portion of TAA GUI

Examples

• listAtd 1 (list participation points of student with index 1)
• listAtd 2 (list participation points of student with index 2)

The listed participation points will be such that every line will be in the format Week NUM: [POINTS]
where NUM represents the week number, and POINTS is the participation points for that week

Example

Week 1: [200]
Week 2: [300]
Week 3: [400]
Week 4: [-1]
Week 5: [-1]
Week 6: [-1]
Week 7: [-1]
Week 8: [-1]
Week 9: [-1]
Week 10: [-1]
Week 11: [-1]
Week 12: [-1]

The above example shows that the student have a participation point of 200 for week 1, 300 for week 2, 400 for week 3, and -1 for the rest of the weeks (attendance is not marked)

Assignments & Submissions

Preface

Assignment: A school assignment. Has an alphanumeric name, a non-negative integer total marks, and student submissions associated with it.

Submission: Linked to an assignment. Each student has a submission for every existing assignment.

For assignments & submissions, you can make the following calls:

• add_asgn
• delete_asgn
• grade
• ungrade
• list_asgn

Add Assignment: add_asgn

Adds an assignment with a specified name and total marks.

If the total marks for the assignment is unspecified, a default value of 100 will be given.

Submission records for that assignment will be immediately created for all existing students. All these submissions will be initially ungraded.

Format: add_asgn n/ASSIGNMENT_NAME [m/TOTAL_MARKS]
Example:

• add_asgn n/Lab 1
• add_asgn n/Lab 2 m/50

Delete Assignment: delete_asgn

Deletes the assignment of assignment_name you provided, along with the student submissions for that assignment.

Format: delete n/ASSIGNMENT_NAME

Example:

• delete_asgn n/Lab 1

Grade Assignment: grade

Grades the student submission of assignment_name and student_id with the provided marks.

You can also indicate whether a student submission is late by adding “late/” at the end.

A submission can be graded multiple times, even if it is already graded. In that case, the latest grade will be taken.

Format: grade n/ASSIGNMENT_NAME i/STUDENT_ID m/MARKS [late/]
Example:

• grade n/Lab 1 i/2 m/20
• grade n/Lab 1 i/3 m/30 late/

Ungrade Assignment: ungrade

Resets the grade of the submission of assignment_name and student_id. It will also reset the late submission status of the submission, if the submission was marked as late.

A submission can be ungraded multiple times, even if it is already ungraded. In that case, the subsequent ungrades will have no effect.

Format: ungrade n/ASSIGNMENT_ID i/STUDENT_ID
Example:

• ungrade n/Lab 1 i/2

List all assignments: list_asgn

Lists all assignments, submissions and their respective information.

Format: list_asgn

Example Output:

• Assignment Lab 1:
  ` [X] Alice: 50/100 marks. <br> [ ] Bob: 0/100 marks.`
  
• Assignment Lab 2:
  ` [ ] Alice: 0/100 marks. <br> [X] Bob: 77/100 marks. (Late Submission)`
  

The example output above shows that there are 2 assignments: Lab 1 & Lab 2.

Alice has a graded submission for Lab 1, and Bob has a graded late submission for Lab 2.

Class List

The class list is list of the students enrolled in a class. For class lists, you can call the following commands:

• Create class list: create_class
• View class statistics: class_stats
• Adding a student: add
• Deleting a student: delete
• Listing all students in a class: classlist
• List all students: list
• Find student: find

Create a class list: create_class

Creates a class list to store the information about a group of students.

Format: create_class LIST_NAME

• The argument LIST_NAME should be the name of the new class list.

Examples:

• create_class cs6244 creates an empty class list.

List students in a class list: classlist

List the students in a particular class list.

Format: create_class LIST_NAME

• The argument LIST_NAME should be the name of the class list which you want to see the students inside.

Examples:

• classlist cs6244 list the students in class cs6244.

List all students in the application: list

List all students.

Format: list

Examples:

• list list all students in the application.

Add a student: add_student

Adds a student to a given class list.

Format: add_student n/STUDENT_NAME cl/CLASS_NAME...

• The argument STUDENT_NAME should be the name of the student to be added. It only accepts alphanumeric inputs and spaces.
• The argument CLASS_NAME should be the name of a given class the student belongs to

Examples:

• add_student n/Tom cl/cs2103t-t14 adds Tom to the class CS2103T-T14
• add_student n/Harry cl/cs6244 adds Harry to the class CS6244

Info: If the class list CLASS_NAME does not exist, it will automatically be created with student STUDENT_NAME as its first student

Tip: You can add a student to multiple classes at once! Just specify multiple cl/ prefixes in your command. e.g. add n/Harry cl/cs6244 cl/cs1231s

Tip: As STUDENT_NAME accepts alphanumeric inputs, student numbers such as A1234567X are perfectly valid student names!

Edit a student: edit_student

Edits a student in the active class list.

Format: edit_student STUDENT_INDEX [n/STUDENT_NAME] [cl/CLASS_NAME]

• The STUDENT_INDEX is the index of the student that is currently being shown on screen.
• At least one of the optional fields must be present. (i.e. either STUDENT_NAME and/or CLASS_NAME)

Examples:

• edit_student 3 n/Barry Allen changes the name of the 3rd student to “Barry Allen”
• edit_student 5 cl/Tutorial_T14 assigns the 5th student only to the class “Tutorial_14”
• edit_student 12 n/Tom Hanks cl/Lab_L11 changes the name of the 12th student to “Tom Hanks”, and assigns him to the class “Lab_L11”

Warning: The new fields will override the fields of the targeted student completely. i.e. to add an extra field, you will have to copy over the previous fields and add one additional parameter containing the new field to be added.

Delete a student: delete_student

Deletes a student from the active class list.

Format: delete_student STUDENT_INDEX

• The STUDENT_INDEX is the index of the student that is currently being shown on screen.

Examples:

• delete_student 3 removes the 3rd student in the currently active/displayed class list

Note: This command will delete the student with the given ID on the active class list, not from the list of all students obtained from using the list command.

View class statistics: class_stats

Displays statistics for the class, based on the specified field.

Format: class_stats st/FIELD [as/ASSIGNMENT_NAME]

• The argument FIELD must only be one of attendance/grades
• If attendance is entered as the FIELD parameter, then ASSIGNMENT_NAME is not required and will be ignored.
• If grades is entered as the FIELD parameter, then ASSIGNMENT_NAME is required.

Examples:

• class_stats st/attendance – see Figure 4 below
• class_stats st/grades as/Test 2 – see Figure 5 below

Note: To view grade statistics, the assignment ASSIGNMENT_NAME must have at least 2 graded submissions, and the submission grades must contain some variance. (i.e. if all the submissions are graded with the exact same marks, then no curve will be drawn as a normal distribution cannot be modelled with 0 variance.)

Info: The FIELD parameter is case-insensitive! i.e. atTenDanCE, while unusual, is still a valid argument to FIELD.

Tip: Want to save the chart? Right click on it, mouseover ‘Save As’ and click on ‘PNG’!

Alarm

For Alarm, you can call the following commands:

• Schedule an alarm: add_alarm
• Remove a scheduled alarm: delete_alarm
• List all scheduled alarms: list_alarms

Schedule an alarm : add_alarm

Add an alarm to the current application.

Format: add_alarm t/TIME c/COMMENT

• The TIME field must be numbers representing minutes
• The COMMENT field contains content of the alarm

Examples:

• add_alarm t/5 c/finish question one
• The above command adds an alarm that rings in 5 minutes, with comment “finish question 1”

Note: Parameter for time has to be an integer.

Remove a scheduled alarm : delete_alarm

Delete a scheduled alarm from the current alarm list. It will not ring on the scheduled time after deletion.

Format: delete_alarm INDEX

• the INDEX is the number assigned to the alarm in the alarm list when we call the list_alarms command

Examples:

• delete_alarm 1

List all scheduled alarms : list_alarms

List all alarms scheduled, arranged in the order of creation, containing time left and comment of each alarm.

Examples:

• list_alarms

CSV Parser

Stores and loads student data in with CSV files.

• Import data in CSV format: import
• Export data in CSV format: export

Our CSV files follow the following format:

1. All our CSV files are header-less.
2. The student data must have exactly 5 columns separated by colons in order:

• Name: Non-blank alphanumeric words. Two students cannot have the same name.
• (Optional) Attendance: Exactly 12 numbers separated by semicolons. Each number is either 0 (absent) or 1 (attended).
  • If unspecified, the default value is all absent.
• (Optional) Participation point: exactly 12 numbers separated by semicolons. Each number is either -1 (unmarked) or an integer between 0-700 (inclusive).
  • If unspecified, the default value is all unmarked.
• (Optional) Submission: submission entries separated by semicolons.
  • Each submission entry has exactly 4 fields separated by colons in order:
    • Assignment name: must exist in the assignment list upon import. No student can have multiple submissions of same assignment name.
    • Graded: either 0 (ungraded) or 1 (graded).
    • Late: either 0 (on time) or 1 (late).
    • Mark: integer between 0 and the total marks of the assignment.
  • If a student made no submission to an assignment, TAA creates a submission record that is ungraded, on time, and marked 0 for this assignment for this student.
• (Optional) Class: Non-blank alphanumeric words separated by semicolons.

1. Optional fields still requires a colon to be represented in the CSV file because “if a column is defined as optional, it means that the column is required to exist, but the value can be blank.”

Acceptable CSV format example: (suppose assignment x, y, and z is already added to the assignment list)

Technoblade,1;0;0;1;1;1;0;1;0;0;0;0,-1;0;-1;2;-1;-1;-1;-1;200;-1;-1;-1,"x,0,0,1;y,0,0,2;z,0,0,3;",Tut1;Tut2;
 Dream Was Taken,    1  ;0;0 ; 1;1;1; 0;1  ;0;0;0;0,-1;0; -1;2;-1;-1;-1  ;-1;200;-1;-1;-1,"  x ,0, 0,2;y,1 ,0,100 ; z,0  ,  0,0 ;  ", Tut2   ;Tut3;
Tommy In It,,-1;0;-1;2;-1;-1;-1;-1;2;-1;-1;-1,"x,1,0,15;z,1,1,180;",Lab
Wilbur Soot,1;0;0;1;1;1;0;1;0;0;0;0, ,"y,0,0,0", ;Tut2;
Ph1LzA,,,,

Excel spreadsheet format that exports acceptable CSV files: (please ignore the first empty row)

Import data in CSV format: import

Import data in CSV format from file.

Format: import [-force] FILE_PATH

• Option -force overwrites records of existing students.
• Nothing is changed to TAA if data reading meets any error.

Successful import of a file containing the example data should display this:

Export data in CSV format: export

Export data in CSV format to file.

Format: export [-force] FILE_PATH

• If file exists, export is blocked unless -force flag is used. Otherwise, create file and export.
• Option -force overwrites existing file.
• Nothing is saved to disk if file access denied.

Acknowledgements

• Libraries used: JavaFX, Jackson, JUnit5, JFreeChart
• This project is based on the AddressBook-Level3 project created by the SE-EDU initiative.

Glossary