One of my colleagues - Prof Paddy Nixon - just e-mailed the department:

"To put me in the mood for a beer this evening (5pm in the Printworks - prob' sitting at the back at the big tables) I marked 263 assessments this afternoon.

It took 15 minutes to mark them and email them out to the students.

The serious point to this is, after an investment of about 1 person year of programming and content work I managed to get an automated systems to run labs assessments for computer systems. I am sincerely astounded at how well it worked and how much easier it has made the management of this course."

At the moment I'm using the old-fashioned way of marking. Taking about 263 minutes per 15 assignments ;-) I must automate. I must automate. I must automate...!!