You'll do much of your homework on computer using the LogiCola program. You'll download LogiCola from my Web site. Give me your scores on a USB flash drive when you take the corresponding written quiz; I won't accept scores after I return the quiz. Try to do the exercises at an average level of 7 or higher (levels go from 1 to 9).

Your exercise scores add a bonus or penalty to your exam score. Let's say your average level (dropping fractions) is N. You get a +1 bonus for each number N is above 7; so you get a +2 bonus if N=9. You get a -1 penalty for each number N is below 7; so you get a -3 penalty if N=4. If you fake scores on the disk, your course grade is lowered by one grade.

Later on, I click SELECTED EXERCISES to display just the exercises I assigned. I click EVERY STUDENT to display scores from every student, and I click VIEW SCORE COLLECTION FILE. I click LEVEL (under the TOOLS menu) to make sure that 7 is the expected scoring level. Then I click PRINT to create a score report that lists the students, what exercises they did, and their resulting bonus or penalty. Most students do every exercise at level 9 and so get a +2 bonus added to their written exam score.

LogiSkor has two listboxes at the top, listing student names and exercises. You can set these to display in various ways:

• You can have the listboxes display ALL EXERCISES or just SELECTED EXERCISES.
• You can have the exercise listbox display scores from EVERY STUDENT or just ONE STUDENT (click the name of the student whose scores you want to display).
• You can have the information be based on a specific STUDENT SCORE.LC FILE (for example, a score file on a USB flash drive) or on an instructor's SCORE COLLECTION FILE.

To delete a student from the SCORE COLLECTION FILE (perhaps a student who dropped your course), highlight the student's name and hit the DELETE key; you will be asked to confirm the deletion.

Normally use AUTORECORD (and use the TOOLS menu to include floppies if some of your students use these). Then the program automatically records scores from flash drives (or optionally from floppies too) that are inserted; it looks through all folders for all "Score.lc" files, so you don't have to worry about what folder(s) these are in.

• Score processing works fast. To test the speed, I inserted four flash drives that had a total of 2411 scores on 14 different score files that were hidden among 680 different folders. Then I clicked AUTORECORD. It took only 2.75 seconds to process all these scores. To view the individual score files that were processed, click the down arrow.
• On rare occasions, AUTORECORD doesn't work and you may have to click BROWSE to find the location of a "Score.lc" file. Normally you just need to pick the flash drive with LogiCola scores. If you need to, you can search for a specific folder with LogiCola scores. If you don't use AUTORECORD, you'll have to click the RECORD button to record scores.
• While LogiCola fits easily on a 1.44 Mb (or even a 720 Kb) floppy disk, I don't recommend that students use these, since floppies go bad frequently. USB flash drives are much more reliable.

• There's no command for saving score collection files, since these are saved automatically when you add student scores to them.
• If you want to create a new score collection file, type a suitable name (e.g., "Fall10" or "Fall 2010 logic classes") in the score-collection-file box; the ".lco" ending will be added if you don't type it. If you've used various score collection files, you can switch between these files by clicking the down arrow.
• If you want to keep score collection files in a folder of your own choosing, then click the OPEN button. This brings up a file browser where you can travel to other folders and open their score collection files or create new such files (by typing a new name in the little box).
• If LogiSkor isn't running, you can click an ".lco" score collection file to load it into LogiSkor. (If you click a student "Score.lc" file, it brings up instead a little dialog box from LogiCola for viewing or printing the scores.)

If you don't care about security or about getting a convenient printout, you can just have students print you their scores using TOOLS | VIEW SCORES within LogiCola.

• FILE MENU:
  • PRINT: Previews the score report and gives various printing options. The score report mirrors how you have things set up -- for example, to list all exercises (or only selected ones), to include all students (or only one), and to be based on the instructor's score collection file (or on individual student Score.lc files).
  • EXIT: Quit the program.
• TOOLS MENU:
  • LEVEL: Lets you specify an expected scoring level (I use 7). LogiSkor calculates a bonus or penalty on this basis. The bonus/penalty = the first digit of the student's average level (on assigned exercises) minus the expected level. For example, if Jones has an average level of 8.7 and the expected level is 5, then the bonus is +3 points.
  • INCLUDE FLOPPIES WHEN AUTORECORD: Lets you use autorecord with floppy disks too, and not just with USB flash drives.
  • HELP BALLOONS: Lets you turn these off once you know how the program operates.
  • BIG WINDOW: Lets you choose between a smaller and a larger size window for LogiSkor. The larger size is useful if you are having students insert flash drives in "Autorecord" mode where they remove their drive when they see their name appear.
  • UPDATE: Checks if you have the latest version of the program. If you need to update LogiSkor, you can then do so by just clicking YES.
• HELP MENU:
  • HELP: Gives you the help file you are now reading.
  • OPEN HELP IN WEB BROWSER: Then you can, for example, print various parts.
  • ABOUT: Gives you the "about box," which displays the current version, program folders, and important Web addresses.