BBGradebookOrganiser/README-inspect.md

Inspect by hash 🔍

Blackboard Gradebook Organiser - Inspect gradebook & submissions by hash

Description

With Inspect by hash you can inspect the submissions for identical files (by generating and comparing SHA256 hashes) and detect if any files have been submitted by multiple students. The tool has two variations:

Inspect gradebook: Before organising a gradebook - for identical files in the files submitted to Blackboard

Inspect submissions: After organising a gradebook - for identical files in the files extracted from any submitted compressed files

Features

• Generates SHA256 hashes for each submitted file, and outputs the list to a CSV file

  • Can exclude files from hashing, if provided with a CSV file listing the file names (only applicable for Inspect submissions)

• Compares the generated hashes and finds any duplicates - ignores duplicates if they are by the same student/submission

• Finds all files with the same hash and outputs the list to a CSV file with the following information:

  • Inspect gradebook: Student ID, file name, SHA256 hash

  • Inspect submissions: Student ID, file path, file name, SHA256 hash

Further analysis needs to be done manually by inspecting and filtering the generated output, depending on the submission and its files.

Instructions

Before running the inspect scripts for the first time, you also need to install the pandas package:

python -m pip install pandas

Inspect gradebook

If you haven't already, extract the downloaded from Blackboard gradebook in a new directory inside BB_gradebooks

• e.g. for AssignmentX extract the gradebook in BB_gradebooks/AssignmentX

To inspect a gradeboook run inspect_gradebook.py and provide the name of the gradebook directory as an argument, e.g. for the gradebook AssignmentX run:

python inspect_gradebook.py AssignmentX

Note: run before organising a gradebook with organise_gradebook.py (or extract, again, the downloaded gradebook, if you want to inspect it after organising its submissions)

Generated CSV files can be found in directory csv-inspect, with the inspected gradebook's name as file name prefix - e.g. inspecting gradebook AssignmentX will create 2 CSV files:

• AssignmentX_gradebook_file_hashes_[datetime].csv - all files and their hashes

• AssignmentX_gradebook_duplicate_[datetime].csv - files with duplicate hashes

Inspect submissions

To inspect submissions run inspect_submissions.py and provide the name of the directory with the organised gradebook submissions as an argument.

• e.g. for the organised gradebook AssignmentX (in BB_submissions/AssignmentX) run:

python inspect_submissions.py AssignmentX

Note: run after organising a gradebook with organise_gradebook.py

Generated CSV files can be found in directory csv-inspect, with the inspected submission's name as file name prefix - e.g. inspecting submissions for AssignmentX will create 2 CSV files:

• AssignmentX_submissions_file_hashes_[datetime].csv - all files and their hashes

• AssignmentX_submissions_duplicate_[datetime].csv - files with duplicate hashes

(Optional) In order to exclude submission files from hashing, create a CSV file in directory csv-inspect to provide the file names to be excluded - e.g. for AssignmentX create:

• AssignmentX_excluded.csv with a column named exclude_filename and list the file names

Note: the directory csv-inspect is automatically created when you run inspect_gradebook.py or inspect_submissions.py - if you want to exclude files before the first run, you need to create it manually.