T189 EMA Helper Online
www.t189.net
The T189 EMA Helper application is a simple Windows application that is designed to help students create their End of Course Assessment (EMA) zip file for subsequent submission to the Open University’s eTMA system. It’s use is entirely optional, students can manually zip up their images and documents if they wish but is designed to help students who are unsure about building a PDF and zipping files.
The application allows the student to select their ten images and a part 2 document for their EMA and it then builds the images in a PDF file and zips this with the part 2 answers document.
Click on Downloads above to download and install the program. After installation, run the program from the Start ... Programs ... T189 menu.
Simply browse for your part 2 document and continue to the next tab.
On the third tab, click “Create ZIP file from images and Part 2 document” and the program will produce an Acrobat file containing all the images in your panel and add that to a ZIP file with your part 2 document.
The total size of the ZIP file submitted for the EMA cannot exceed five megabytes and the size of the final ZIP file is displayed. If this is less than 5 Mb then this will be acceptable to the eTMA system.
Before you are ready to submit your ZIP file, you should check its contents are correct. To help you do this, click “Test ZIP File”.
Using the Program
The opening screen has ten slots for images, click on each slot to browse and load an image. In this screen-shot, only the eighth image still has to be loaded:
This will extract the files from the ZIP file into a temporary folder “T189_test_extract” and opens the folder as in the example above (note it may appear different on your system depending on the operating system and your folder display preferences).
Double-click on the readme file in the folder listing and follow the instructions to test the contents of the ZIP file are correct.
Alternatively, clicking “Open ZIP file” will simply open the created ZIP file.
When you are satisfied, you can submit the ZIP file the program created to the Open University using the normal eTMA web system. Click “Open eTMA in web browser” to navigate to the correct web page to submit your EMA.
Please note, although this program is supplied to help with the creation of the zip file, it is still your responsibility to check the contents of the ZIP file are correct before submission (just as it would be if you had used Winzip or any other tool to create it). In particular, please make sure you submit the correct zip file, not one you created and saved earlier!
Finally, please submit your ZIP file under assignment “30-EMA” by selecting this option in the eTMA system web-site.
As each image is loaded, the application checks that it is within the recommended size range both in pixel size and the amount of disk space the image file takes up.
If an image is too small, then you need to check that you have loaded the correct image (ie you are not using a thumbnail by mistake!). An image that is too small is never going to look as good to a marker as one that is bigger. Similarly, if the file is below about 50 Kb then it is unlikely to have good enough quality for the EMA.
If an image is too big then the program will offer to resize it for you by enabling a “Fix It” button for images that are too large. Simply click this button and a copy of the image will be resized to the recommended size range and used instead of your original image.
Alternatively, you can of course resize the image in Photoshop and reload it by clicking on the image thumbnail again.
Note: these image size warnings are advisory only. It is up to you whether you decide to change the sizes of your image. You can still submit the EMA regardless of what the program says about the image sizes.
However, the Open University impose a five megabyte limit on the total size of the zip file you can submit via the eTMA system. This is why the helper program gives advice about file sizes, to help you keep within this limit.
You can re-order the images in your submission by simply clicking and dragging the numbered column headers. Click the Remove button (with the “x”) if you change your mind and want to remove a file from your EMA list.
The program will remember the images loaded between each run.
The second tab allows you to select and load your Part 2 document:
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