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You need to do two things: during the main part of the laboratory, you will be
marking students' work and recording marks on your `Generic Marking Sheet'.
Towards the end of the laboratory session you will then need to transfer your
marks into the Laboratory Book.
The usual way for students to indicate that they are ready for their work to
be marked is for them to write their name on a whiteboard. Simply cross off a
name, find the machine where the student is sitting and start marking. Your
Laboratory Supervisor may indicate that they want you to pick names at random
from the marking list, to discourage students from stealing extra time and
placing their names on the bottom of the list in the hope you will work
through it in order. After a certain time into the session, the Laboratory
Supervisor may say that new names added to the marking list will be considered
to be `late' -- you will need to record this on the Marking Sheet (in this
particular case, note that the date you enter may be the same as that for the
Extension, but the student has missed the time stipulated for being ready to
have extended work marked).
You will rapidly develop your own style in marking but the following
guidelines will help you.
- This may well be the only contact time students have with
staff. You should therefore try to give feedback when marking work,
encouraging students for those things they are doing right, pointing
out what is not so good and suggesting improvements.
- Where appropriate, ensure that the student has run
`labprint' before you mark their work. You should use the
labprint sheets to record marks and also to make written comments
about the exercise, giving constructive feedback as necessary.
- Make sure the student understands the code they have written. It is both
extremely good practice for them to explain how the code works, and of
course it immediately catches out those who have blindly copied code. If you
suspect that a student has not written the code they are claiming to be
their own, then inform the Laboratory Supervisor. It is generally not a good
idea to confront the potential plagiariser on the spot, but to simply take
off marks for their low level of understanding (if that is the case, and is
appropriate in the marking scheme). The Laboratory Supervisor can make
further investigations outside the laboratory -- after all, plagiarism is a
serious offence and requires time and effort to investigate it. If you
think that you have recognised very similar code in several solutions, again
inform the Laboratory Supervisor.
- Apply the marking scheme as closely as you can; if there are ambiguities
then it is good to raise these early on with the Laboratory Supervisor in
one of the off-line discussion sessions so that there is consistency between
all demonstrators (students are very precious about every single mark
sometimes).
- Some marking schemes do not differentiate highly between solutions that
function and well-crafted solutions -- students start to expect to get full
marks. You should agree with the Laboratory Supervisor what marks to give
and when marks should be deducted.
- In your feedback to the students, try to express the marks you give as
reward for good things rather than as marks lost for bad things -- this is
more likely to encourage students, especially if they are not very confident
or are struggling somewhat.
- When marking try not to improve code or allow students to rewrite the
code, unless the improvements are very minor.
- Ensure that the demonstrated code is produced from the source code --
ask the student to compile it beforehand if appropriate to the exercise.
- You should encourage students to think about putting together a good
presentation/demonstration -- it certainly will make your life easier and
be good experience for the students.
When you have marked a piece of work you need to record the mark, laboratory
group, exercise (and whether the work is `late') on your generic mark sheet.
For many exercises, the student also needs to `labmail' the work, recording
the mark awarded, and who the demonstrator is -- it is best to stay with the
student until they have done this (this is a straightforward way also to
ensure that the student labmails the same work that they have just
demonstrated).
The student needs to locate the files in the appropriate directory for the
exercise they are undertaking, and name the files to match those expected by
ARCADE. For example, for course CS2021, exercise 1 may require one file called
mbrot.c. The student would therefore need to run labmail from the
directory $HOME/CS2021/ex1/
which should contain the file
mbrot.c. Labmail is run simply by typing `labmail' at a
prompt -- its use is then (hopefully) self-explanatory.
Next: Transferring Marks to the
Up: The laboratories themselves
Previous: The laboratories themselves
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John Latham
2008-10-30