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Future enhancements

Development of ARCADE is on-going, and there is still much to do. The author currently has a list of some 100 enhancements planned for the future. These vary from trivial to very complex.

For example, there is currently no special software for editing the configuration files describing the structure of the laboratories and the student details! These are stored in text files and carefully altered with a standard text editor.

A new feature, which has in fact just been added but not yet used, allows the manager to specify certain module sessions as having a `Non-Registered' group. This contains all of the people who in fact are not registered to take that module, but who might suddenly decide to. This will be invaluable for the first few weeks of a new semester when the students keep changing their options: at least there can be somewhere ready printed to record their marks until things settle down.

Another planned feature, which is related to the above, is a mechanism for informing each student, again by email, of the details which the system database has about him or her. This would be sent automatically as it changes, so the student can check the accuracy. Experience has shown that students are not always quick to recognize the need to tell their department that they are intending to change modules, for example, and this leads to much confusion.

Smaller extensions to functionality include a desire to be able to record a query relating to a piece of work for an individual student. For example, when one suspects that the work was copied and the student is required to come and talk about it. The idea is that a query would be `opened', and then later `closed' when the question is answered. The system would keep track of and summarize all currently opened queries.

Perhaps the most complex intended extension is a provision for running unit-based laboratory courses. The idea here is that there would be a number of equally weighted units, or `milestones' making up the total work for one module. In order to fit in with a deadline structure, the number of units would be a whole multiple of the number of laboratory sessions. Each deadline would require a student to hand-in at least some number of units, and at most some greater number of units. For example, a module might have 10 sessions, with 20 units. The minimum hand-in for each session would be one unit, the maximum would be two. The problem with this scheme is the management of which units correspond to which deadlines: this would be different for each student depending on his or her previous pattern of work!

It is certainly intended to tie-up ARCADE more closely with plagiarism detection software (currently it can be made to complain that a student has failed to proffer a piece of work for such detection as part of his or her feedback). Similarly, it would be very easy to integrate the system with automatic assessment software, although this is not considered as part of the current scope of the development.


next up previous
Next: Comparison with Ceilidh Up: Managing Coursework: Wringing the Previous: Success of ARCADE

John T. Latham
Fri Oct 17 04:53:02 BST 1997