Abstract
The aim of the TACO (Teaching and Coursework Online) project was to develop a generic system for distributed authoring and management of computer-based coursework. The requirements for such a system were established in requirements capture workshops with lecturers from a range of academic departments. Lecturers can create web-based self-learning exercises and assessed coursework without knowledge of HTML or other authoring languages. A form-based user interface allows lecturers to choose from a range of question types, marking schemes and weightings, including confidence assessment. Students completing coursework receive immediate feedback in the form of marks, and comments or explanations associated with questions. Lecturers and students interact with TACO through a highly familiar user interface — a web browser. The system itself consists of a Java Web server and a commercial database; the only code written for the project is a number of Java servlets which manage the interaction between these. Lecturers from different departments at UCL used the first implementation of TACO to author sets of self-learning exercises and assessed assignments for one of their courses. The results of this pilot study — involving 4 lecturers and 500 students — were encouraging. In this chapter, we report on how lecturers use and view the system after 3 years of continuing use, and discuss issues which prevent institution-wide adoption of such a system.
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Sasse, M.A., Monthienvichienchai, R., Harris, C., Ismail, I., Wheeldon, R. (2002). Support for Authoring and Managing Web- Based Coursework: The TACO Project. In: Hazemi, R., Hailes, S. (eds) The Digital University — Building a Learning Community. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0167-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-0167-3_10
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