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Abstract

We briefly describe ARCADE, a system which has successfully solved the problem of effectively and efficiently managing continuous assessment of all coursework undertaken by first and second year undergraduates in one of the UK's largest Computer Science Departments. The system is based upon a simple but effective regime of deadlines and their enforcement. It monitors and extrapolates the behaviour of all students in all of the modules taken, so that it can automatically give feedback (via email) to the students who need it. It collates individual exercise marks and computes a single mark for each student for each module. Thus it does much of the work of an overall laboratory manager, individual module managers and individual personal tutors. The system is suitable for use in any environment where the students have email access, with the coursework being of any nature and done in any medium. The paper concludes by claiming that there is much to be gained by automating coursework management.



John T. Latham
Fri Oct 17 04:53:02 BST 1997