Ceilidh System Fourth Release Version 2.2 : February 1994 System changes General Courses or individual exercises can now include in a "type" file MAXSUB=20 to limit the number of submissions each student may make MINGAP=30 to set the minimum seconds between submissions OUTOF=10 to cause all mark totals to be scaled out of 10 VDATA=no to inhibit viewing of the test data SAVEOUT=yes to cause the user's test output to be stored for analysis in solns/.out ARFILES="hotel.C header.h booking.C" causes all the named files to be saved in an archive format file in the solutions directory in a file .ar C_ORACLE=myoracle to specify a different oracle Mark actions: Marking can now include "structure" marking, using "lint" output for C, or "g++ -Wall" output for C++ Marking can now include program run-time execution counts using profiling on SUN C compilers The "mark.act" mark actions file can now specify more complex storage of student results, including use of RCS to store all the submissions, and storage of executables. Question-answer marking uses "ar" to combine the answers. A new exercise type "MARK" for exercises used purely for mark entry purposes. A new statistics package for staff/tutor use is released, using X-windows and graphics for the displays. There are new features built into the oracle for scaling marks, and for subtracting marks for unwanted features. The oracle does not now require an "awk" supporting functions. Better "default course unit exercise" system: Each user has a default course, and a separate default unit/exercise for each course they use. More efficient, less use of "<<" in the shell scripts. The installation script is simpler to use. Menu version Minor changes to the items available on the menus. More portability (but still not to COSIX). Better error handling Tutor menu: added mark and submit student work after exercise closure date remark a program already submitted The course developer menu is now more helpful Setting up exercises Editing notes if you have the master copy CLI version No changes X version First release, for SUNOS only, using X11r4 and Motif-v1.1.x. It has not been tested under X11r5 or Motif-v1.2.x but there should not be any problems with any system using these more up-to-date versions. Course changes C Course Many more exercises Execution count marking Structure marking Corrections to the notes C++ course pr1 Many more exercises Structure marking Minor corrections to the notes C++ course pr2 Pascal course =============================================== Ceilidh System Third Release Version 2.1 : July 1993 Major changes are as follows. There has been a complete rewrite of the system. We now have A dumb terminal menu version in directory ~ceilidh/bin.mnu control- ling script in file CEILIDH menus for students, tutors, teachers, developers A command line interface version in directory ~ceilidh/bin.cli which directory must be in your path if you wish to use it See document "CLI" for details. An X-window interface in directory ~ceilidh/bin.x controlling script in file CEILIDH as a separate release. The tools (called by all 3 interfaces) are in directory Tools/C* (shell scripts) directory Tools/[a-z]* (executables) directory Tools/SOURCES/*.[ch] (sources for executables) The function of all tools is described in the "Design" document. All file names have been adjusted for MS-DOS compatibility, up to 8 characters before the dot, at most 3 afterwards. There may be a few exceptions still! There is more/better documentation, including a design document. An additional experimental course "tst" is distributed with examples of exercises of type question/answer text submission compiled languages interpreted languages to encourage users to develop courses. System changes: The total system contents have been split as above. Users are now split into more categories, each with their own documena- tion and menu. user = student tutor as before, read access to all marks teacher = course admin facilities, list of permitted users set up by the system administrator developer = course creation/editing facilities such a person must login to "ceilidh" system administrator Every exercise now has a file "type" specifying the type of exercise, and the compiler, file suffix etc to be used, containing e.g. TYPE=COMP CC=g++ SUFF=C New exercise facilities include Interpreted language programs. Mark without submitting. User specified oracles. Course specific compilation, typography etc programs can now be stored in the course/bin directory. The marking actions file can now be more specific. The use for on-line submission of text documents by students is encouraged, to be marked and marks entered by hand. See document "Develop" for details. Question/answer improved There is a variety of possible other oracles for multi-choice and numeric answers. The new Oracle features also help. See document "Qu-ans" for details. Extra Oracle features for sequencing values. See document "Oracle" for details. Closer teacher control over exercises. The teacher "open"s particular exercises, then makes them "late", then "close"s them. The teacher is encouraged to obtain overall metrics and plagiarism results for late and closed exercises. Exercise results are given weighting factors in overall calculations. Overall mark totals can then be piecewise scaled. All this makes the display of marks much faster. Individual units of the course can be closed or opened. See document "Teacher" for details. Audit trail facilities have been added. The system administrator can keep audit trails of particular commands (e.g. setup, mark ...) and/or particular students (all activities) and inspect the records. Errors are logged as an audit trail, not by email. See the document "Develop" for details. Courses: C course: All exercises renumbered with mnemonics Additional exercises Expanded notes The course is still weak from unit 8 onwards, volunteers welcome! Intro to C++ (pr1) course: Expanded notes, more exercises. Further C++ (pr2) course: Added two exercises: the Pie Machine (assessed) and the Robot (essay). Bug fixes in the Hotel and Rational exercises to solve some minor problems. Correcting some mistakes in the notes. Course "tst" This is just to demonstrate exercises of all types, so that you can start from an existing exercise. There are awk and shell programming exercises, question/answer, and text submission. =============================================== Ceilidh System Second Release Version 1.2 : Christmas 1992 The major changes to the first release are detailed below. System: Many small changes and bug fixes Student commands: new student command "vm" (view marks, very slow!) Tutor commands: new command "vo" to view secret oracle files Teacher menu: improved teacher facilities for setting new exercises menu commands made more uniform with student menu Papers made more uniform, teacher guide expanded greatly student guide added General: The "co" facility now works through email to the first named person in the "staff.list" file for that course. This requires that the "staff.list" file be set up properly. Some defaults have been modified in the light of experience. max seconds before a user process is killed from 5 to 10 seconds max size of a saved text file from 20k to 50k minimum time between mark submissions from 60 to 300 seconds typographic metric ranges have been widened Simple multiple choice exercise is now used for student question- naires. Essay type exercises can now be used for on-line essay submission (but no automatic marking!). Courses: All courses now include a Ceilidh student questionnaire at the end, please ask your students to complete it, and email us the resulting "marks" file. prg1: C++ first course Notes in each unit greatly extended in "notes.cat" (for "more") and "notes.ps" (PostScript). PostScript files "notes.ohp" added, suitable for overheads Many more exercises All skeletons mark more clearly where the student must amend the skeleton program prg2: Further C++ First release, covers classes and program design c: Many small improvements, mostly due to Heriot Watt comments: thank you! PostScript files "notes.ohp" added, suitable for overheads Some more exercises All skeletons mark more clearly where the student must amend the skeleton program Still weak on exercises in later units (EF will be using it locally next semester; expect improvements!) =============================================== Version 1.1 : First public release, June 1992. System: As seen Courses: prg1 (C++ introduction) c (C)