🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 18 Dec 1991 09:12:53 EST Mike Hull said:
>The University of Ottawa has a course/prof evaluation system that uses
>scanner forms.  Each student in a class answers a set of questions on
>a form. The forms are collected, and a "header sheet" is added to the
>bundle.  This header gives the course code, prof's name and employee
>number, and a few other pieces of data.  The bundle is scanned, and a
>record is produced giving the totals for the questions.
>
>
>We would like to pre-code the header sheets such that the clerical
>staff will have to fill in bubbles only when the pre-coded info is
>not correct (eg, prof listed in calendar is not the one who actually
>taught the course).
>
>The ways we think this could be done are:
> (1) Print a bar-code on the sheet.  The value printed would be like
>     a UPC code - a table lookup would give all the desired info.
>     For the humans involved, the course code, prof name, etc would
>     be printed beside the bar code, in an area that the scanner
>     would ignore.
> (2) Use a printer (impact/laser) to fill in a row of bubbles.  This
>     would be processed as a binary pattern, thus giving the same value
>     as the bar-code would.
>
>
The University of Alberta has used the IDQ system (acquired from the
University of Michigan) for the past six years.  This is a cafeteria
system which allows:
  1. selecting questions from a question bank to print on an OMR form
  2. printing the name and course info on the sheet and 'pre-slugging'
     bubbles to link the responses back to the requisition file
  3. generation of norm-referenced reports where the norms may be for
     a. the total campus, faculty or department
     b. classes with similar course levels
     c. classes with similar class sizes
     or a combination of a,b,c.

We use a Xerox 9700 laser printer to (over)print the forms.  This
generally works pretty well--but we do have problems consistently
achieving acceptable line-up trying to print on cut sheets as
opposed to continuous forms.  The feed stock for the printer are
NCS forms which already have the timing lines, skunk marks, bias bar,
pre-slug grid and 5-choice response bubbles printed on them.

I keep wishing I could locate a medium priced laser printer (without
the price tag of an IBM 3800) which would satisfy the line-up
requirements without requiring me to sacrifice: upper/lower case,
15 characters per inch, first-class "pre-slug" character, and
generally the high-quality printing afforded by the Xerox 9700.
While bar-coding might get away from the line-up problems on the
pre-slugging, if there are line-up problems here they will follow
through on the positioning of the text of the questions as well.