This paper has described a deadline regime and a supporting system for efficiently managing coursework undertaken by large numbers of students in a number of differently natured modules. It has also made the, difficult to substantiate, claim that the system is very successful. There certainly is the widespread belief among the staff of the author's department that the system not only manages the chaos, but simply smooths away nearly all of the administrative overhead of the various module managers, and at the same time, actually achieves a substantial increase in the work effort of the students.
ARCADE was designed to manage and monitor the work and marks of students independently of the kind of academic work undertaken. This common framework can be augmented with sub-systems designed specifically for the support of certain topics (e.g. plagiarism detectors for programs, machine assessments, etc.) were appropriate. The author believes the system could, perhaps with some modifications, be used in many other departments and even other disciplines. He was very encouraged at the small number of modifications that were needed to make it suitable for use at Durham University Computer Science Department and its continued success there.
However, the point of this paper is not to sell ARCADE. The primary message is that computerized work management can be very cost effective and is an attractive option for any large department to consider. The author believes that the development effort he has spent on the system is far less than the work saved by his department in general, and the work he has saved himself as a laboratory manager. With increasing pressure to gain greater efficiency, we can feel we are forever wringing blood from stones. This, however, is an example of a stone which turned out to be a tasty nut worth cracking.