Martin's BCIM Website Blog

I recently played around with Google's new free spreadsheets web application, and was VERY impressed. Coincidentally, I've just had an exchange of emails with Piers M. on this very subject; see slightly edited quotes below. Even though Piers thinks it wouldn't be suitable for his tutors, I think that other unit teams might well find it useful.

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Hi Martin
 
Organizational Behaviour (MHR-1-133) is a large first-year unit taught to 300+ 
students in year 1 sem 1 (2 cohorts, 6 courses), and about 80 students in year 
1 sem 2 (3 courses).
 
Over the year, around 8-10 seminar tutors put in marks for around 18 seminar 
groups.  Whether they submit these marks direct to the administrator, or to me 
as unit coordinator, a great deal of collation and rechecking is needed and a 
very inefficient and error-prone process has resulted.
 
I discussed with Fintan the possibility of tutors directly submitting to an 
online spreadsheet.  He feels that we could put something on the BCIM staff 
Intranet site, but a "web form" method of submission would be more practical 
than tutors directly opening the spreadsheet.
 
He said that I should discuss it with you.
 
What do you think?
 
Best -- Piers

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Hi Piers,

Mike C. could I'm sure design and implement something suitable, but
it would be a lot of work and I really don't think it's necessary. I
would suggest instead using the new Google Spreadsheets system:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/

I've tried it, and I think it's great. It can import/export Excel
spreadsheets, so you are able to start by importing your normal blank
unit marks spreadsheet and then export a populated spreadsheet at the
end for final processing, submission and archiving. Each tutor would
need to create a Google account for themselves, and you can set it up
so that all of the tutors can read and write to the same spreadsheet.
I think it would be perfect for what you've described. Please have a
play with it and let me know what you think.

Martin.

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Martin,

Thanks for this.  You're right, this is a wonderful resource!  On reflection 
though, I'm not sure that it would work in practice with our HPLs.  In my 
experience, there is a great reluctance among HR staff to deal with even the 
most straightforward of software solutions.  This does make me realise that 
perhaps we are better continuing as we are rather than asking Mike to design 
something which, in a similar way, might not be adopted by colleagues.
 
Anyway, thanks for introducing me to a new facility.

Piers.