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. Student comments from submissions are also extracted into a single text file for convenient access and review.
Additionally, after organising submissions, you can inspect all submitted files to detect duplicated files from different submissions/students by generating and comparing SHA256 hashes. See section Inspect submissions for details.

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)
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 displayed on the terminal - they need to be extracted manually
Inspect submissions by SHA256 hash 🆕

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

Inspect submissions 🔍

Description

Generates SHA256 hashes for each submitted file, and outputs list to CSV file
Compares the generated hashes and finds any duplicate hashes - ignores duplicates if they are by the same student/submission
Finds all files with a duplicated hash and outputs them to CSV file with the following information: Student ID, file path, file name (without path), SHA256 hash
- Further inspection and filtering needs to be done manually, depending on the submission files

Usage

For this feature you also need to install the pandas package
- python -m pip install pandas
Usage: python inspect_submissions.py GRADEBOOK_DIR_NAME
- Note: run after organising a gradebook with organise_gradebook.py
Generated CSV files can be found in directory csv, with GRADEBOOK_DIR_NAME as file name prefix
- e.g. inspecting submissions for AssignmentX will create 2 csv files:
  - AssignmentX_file_hashes_[datetime].csv
  - AssignmentX_suspicious_[datetime].csv

Notes

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

ANYTHING_STUDENTNUMBER_attempt_DATETIME_FILENAME