In the current climate, there is much pressure on all of us to increase productivity, but naturally we worry about allowing standards to fall. There is evidence, or at least a feeling, that more students are arriving at university who need some considerable hand-holding, yet staff have less and less time to do so. This was, and is, the context for the system described in this paper. At the outset, in September 1993, the author had just been (perhaps reluctantly) placed in charge of managing the entire first year laboratories, in addition to his existing duties. This appointment was necessitated by the start of proper semesterization and a major new syllabus: the finely-grained modularity of continuous assessment in the new syllabus made it impossible to `manage' in the ad-hoc fashion previously enjoyed. The author was keen to use computers to maximize his efficiency in this job - hoping to make the machine do all of the donkey-work, leaving only the more sensitive issues to the Human. The system was developed from scratch during its first year of use (much on a `night-before' basis) and the following year it was used, by another person, to manage the entire second year laboratories.
It has now grown considerably, and has been used to successfully manage 5 whole first years and 4 whole second years at Manchester (corresponding to over 200,000 student contact hours).
It has also been used since September 1995, at Durham University Computer Science Department to manage all first and second year coursework, and all lecture attendance.
ARCADE is an acronym for Administering and Running Continuous Assessment with Deadlines and Extensions.