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The recent National Students Survey showed that feedback to students was an ongoing problem in Higher Education. This paper reports on the extension of our past research into the provision of automated feedback for objective testing. In the research presented here, the system has been further developed for marking practical and essay questions and providing automated feedback. Recent research at the University of Hertfordshire was able to show that learners and tutors accept and value our automated feedback approach based on objective tests and Computer Adaptive Testing. The research reported in this paper is an important extension to this work. The automated feedback system developed for objective testing has been extended to include practical testing and essay type questions. The automated feedback system, which can be used within any subject area, is based on a simple marking scheme created by the subject tutor as a text file according to a simple template. Marks for each option and a set of feedback statements are held within a database on a computer. As marks are awarded for each question by the teacher an individual feedback file is created automatically for each learner. Teachers may also add and modify comments to each learner and save additional feedback to the database for later use. Each individual feedback file was emailed automatically to learners. The development of the system is explained in the paper and testing and evaluation with 350 first year (1 final practical test), 120 second year (1 written and 1 practical tests) and 100 final year (1 final practical test) undergraduate Computer Science students is reported. It was found that the time to mark practical and essay type tests was reduced by more than 30% in all cases compared to previous years. More importantly it was possible to provide good quality individual feedback to learners rapidly. Feedback was delivered to all within three weeks of the test submission date. In end of module tests it was very beneficial indeed as it had proven difficult to provide feedback in the past after modules had ended. Examples of the feedback provided are presented in the paper and the development of the system using a user-centred approach based on student and staff evaluation is explained. The comments of staff teaching on these modules and a sample of students who took part in this series of evaluations of the system are presented. The results of these evaluations were very positive and are reported in the paper, showing the changes that were made to the system at each iteration of the development cycle. The provision of fast effective feedback is vital and this system was found to be an important addition to the tools available. (Contains 8 tables and 4 figures.)

This paper describes a mechanism developed by the authors to gather student feedback from formative revision Multiple Choice Questionnaires (MCQs) within an on-line learning system. The MCQs provided first year Computer Science students with instant formative feedback, while data was also gathered about student responses, such as the percentage opting for each answer and the time taken to answer the question. We measured how students were using our on-line learning system; whether they were in fact "workers" who provided answers to the MCQs, were "lurkers" who did not provide answers but asked for solutions or "shirkers", who did not access the site at all! The data indicates that the time taken to answer a harder question was less than that of an easier question suggesting that the workers turned into lurkers strategically when they thought they could not answer successfully. It was not however clear whether the lurker suddenly finding an easier question would change back into a worker. Future work to encourage the shirkers to participate is also discussed.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to consider the under-representation of women in computing, information technology (IT) and information systems in most Western countries. This under-representation can only be detrimental to society. Design/methodology/approach: The authors discuss recently published studies on the under-representation of women in this field, and the lack of career progression for women, particularly in positions of senior responsibility. The results of a survey conducted in the UK, Greece, Malaysia and China are presented, and similarities as well as differences are identified. Malaysia and China are included as the under-representation is much less in the Asian countries. Findings: The authors identify the main reasons for the under-representation and lack of career progression, and study the effect of national culture on the formation of strategy and of practice in the four countries. Research limitations/implications: The survey respondents are mainly female students studying computing/IT at degree level. In the next phase of the research, the survey will include both male and female students, lecturers and employees within the IT sector. The research will be extended into a longitudinal study, in order to monitor trends. Originality/value: The UK Government is currently undertaking a number of initiatives to improve the representation of women in information and communication technologies. For those initiatives to be successful, the cultural issues identified in the paper need to be considered. (Contains 7 tables.)