CSC/ECE 517 Spring 2024 - E2414 Grading Audit Trail

Problem Statement

NC State faculty members and students use Expertiza Open-Source Website to submit assignments, grade them, form teams, and among other features. The main problem statement for project E2414 is that there is no traceability on who was the instructor that assigned or edited a grade of a submission.

Program Objectives

Grading Audit Trail must be implemented with the following information to be stored:

1. When an instructor assigns a grade, there needs to be an indication of who did it and when it was done.

2. Comments previously provided by other instructors must also be preserved.

This information needs to be stored every time an instructor edits a grade / comments and clicks the save button. The grading audit trail can probably pattern off the submission records history on Expertiza. The submission record page can be reached by logging in as instructor -> Manage -> Assignments -> View Submissions -> History. At the minimum, a grading log entry must include the instructor id, assignment id, student id, grade comment and timestamp.

Implementation

Creating GradingHistoriesController

The review_grading_history.rb in Ruby on Rails is designed to manage and display the grading history for assignments within an educational application. It leverages Rails' MVC architecture, utilizing callbacks for pre-action setup, concerns for authorization logic, and ActiveRecord for database interactions. The controller contains methods to check user permissions, differentiate grading histories based on whether they're for submissions or reviews, and list all related grading history entries in reverse chronological order. The authorization logic is particularly detailed, allowing access to different users based on their roles (such as admin, instructor, or TA) and their relationship to the assignment or course. Through the use of parameter handling, conditional logic, and efficient database queries, the controller effectively serves its purpose within the application, showcasing best practices in Ruby on Rails development.

Creating Model GradingHistory

The grading_history.rb model acts as a foundational component within the audit system, linking grading records to specific instructors and assignments through belongs_to associations, thus facilitating the tracking and historical analysis of grading actions in the educational platform.

Creating Model ReviewGradingHistory

The review_grading_history.rb model, inheriting from the controller, is tailored for peer review grading events, featuring protection against mass-assignment vulnerabilities and establishing a relationship with the Participant class to track review grades within the system.