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, so he or she can see that the laboratory is running smoothly (or not). To assist in the monitoring of how the various modules are going, the manager can see another summary showing the current percentage (predicted) failure rate and the number of students with irregularities, 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
Figure 4: Example histogram of a `difficult' module
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, etc..