One might be excused at first for thinking that the data collection requirements of the regime described above make it prohibitively expensive. Certainly there is a measure of necessary bureaucracy, but the real question is whether the gain and the work saved outweighs this; and the author believes it certainly does. The gains are very high, and the level of administrative overhead is less than most people expect.
The system produces a printed paper sheet for each laboratory session, containing the module name, the session name, the group name, and the name of each student who should be in that session, along with various columns for the data collection. For a session with a deadline, these columns are attendance, completion by deadline, extension, completion by extension, date of completion (for work completed even later) and marks. An example can be found in figure 1.
The whole set of sheets for a particular module are stored in a ring binder, organized by group. These sheets are completed by hand during the laboratory session (and at other times - for example after a bout of off-line marking). This is not onerous: in the vast majority of cases the data entered for a student is just a series of ticks and a mark. For example, one of the two most common cases is a tick for attendance, a tick for completion and then a mark. The other most common case is a tick for attendance, a blank for completion (later interpreted as a cross), a tick for extension, a tick for completion by extension, and a mark.
In between laboratory sessions, the hand-written data is entered on to the computer, which then prints updated versions of the sheets to be swapped for the old ones in the ring binders. Thus at the start of a laboratory session, when one is collecting work from the previous session, the laboratory staff are adding data by hand to a sheet which already has printed data on it.
For obvious reasons, a high priority in the development of the system was to optimize the user interface to the data entry program. In the first year of operation (whilst the system was being developed simultaneously) the author deliberately took it upon himself to enter all of the data, with the result that the program is easy and fast to use. The user is presented with a form similar to the paper sheet, and most data entry is by single key stroke. For example, a single `/' key stroke records attendance, the cursor then moves to the next column where another `/' records completion by deadline, so the program puts a hyphen in the extension column, a tick in the completion by extension column and a hyphen in the date column, and moves the cursor to the mark column. The user could then enter the mark (if it is available) and upon pressing the enter key the cursor moves to the next student. And so on. Additionally, the space bar continually changes its function so that pressing it causes the next most obvious thing to be done - for example, to move the cursor to the next place on the sheet where data can be added.
To make data entry even faster, the computer can read out a 3 digit code uniquely identifying the student over which the cursor lies. This code also appears on the printed sheets, and thus much of the data can be reliably entered without the user having to look at the screen.
In the author's department, all the data for first and second year laboratories is entered by one member of clerical staff, who simultaneously front-ends queries to the computer systems administration staff, runs all the student printer services and the `Student Resource Centre': handing out lecture notes, tutorial answers for photocopying, etc.. She is no more overworked than any other typical member of University Staff!
Despite the above claims, one may still wonder why such old technology as paper is used to collect the raw data. Two possible alternatives would be to allow the computer to collect (some of) the data directly from the students, or to allow the laboratory staff to enter data directly onto computer.
The author believes that collecting data directly from the students would be a false economy, probably leading to a higher academic cost than would be saved in data entry. The main concern is the danger of a student being able to escape interaction with a member of the laboratory staff. Such interaction is crucial to the well-being of, particularly weaker, students, and the collection of data is a simple mechanism to ensure that every student gets spoken to. For example, it is very common for a student to tell you he or she is struggling whilst you are taking his or her attendance.
As for laboratory staff entering data directly onto computer, this will only be practical when hand-held A4-sized note-pad machines are cheap enough to be provided to every member of staff. Meanwhile the portability and random-accessibility of a piece of paper beats asking the students to queue up at a workstation in alphabetical order!
