Management aspects

The structure of the laboratory is table-driven under the control of the year manager. The number of sessions, groups, deadlines etc., are configured at the start of the year or semester. Each deadline can be given an arbitrary maximum mark, as suits the marking scheme of the person who designed the exercise, and also an arbitrary integer weighting. The advantage of the latter is that during the year, or towards its end, the year manager might decide to alter the weighting of a particular exercise - perhaps because it was too hard, or too easy, without having to alter any of the individual student's marks.

ARCADE readily provides the year manager with many results and tools. For example, he or she can see a one-page summary of what needs doing at any time, showing how much work is expected, needs marking, how much data needs entering, how many unresolved queries there are, and so on.

To assist in the monitoring of the various modules, the manager can see a report containing a one-line summary for each module. This gives information like the current percentage (predicted) failure rate, the percentage of students with irregularities, and attendance statistics for each module.

The system collates all the (predicted) marks for each module into a single table, and produces a summary for each module and a histogram with an indication of the students' pattern of working. Figures 3 and 4 show the summary and histogram respectively for a module which many students found difficult.

**Figure 3:** Example course summary of a `difficult' module
$\begin{figure}\begin{tex2html_preform}\begin{verbatim}Course Summary for module ... ..., reduced. This evidence would suggest that the module is too hard! \end{figure}$

**Figure 4:** Example histogram of a `difficult' module
$\begin{figure}\begin{tex2html_preform}\begin{verbatim}Histogram for module 1001 ... ...excuse and . means missed. Sessions 5 and 7 did not have deadlines. \end{figure}$

At the end of the year or semester, the manager can request a single file containing all the overall laboratory marks for the year: each tuple in the file relates a student, a module, and a percentage mark. (This is provided so the laboratory marks can be sucked into another system which combines them with examination marks, etc..)

The system can also provide lists of marking outstanding, or work which requires demonstrating by the student, or work expected, attendance summaries, etc.. It can provide timetables for modules, groups and even individual students. It has some provisions to assist in the allocation of laboratory demonstrators to sessions.