Program design, abstract machines and the design engineer

Structured programming is a design methodology for producing computer programs. A technique is described for designing programs by this methodology, together with the use of abstract machines, so that the logic designer producing programs for microprocessors can do so in a more natural way

Processor management in a multiprocessor system

In a single-processor system, much investigation has been carried out into the way in which memory should be managed. In a multiprocessor system, the management of processors is equally important, and many of the results of memory management investigations are applicable to processor management also. The letter explains the similarities and their consequences on processor-management policies in a multiprocessor system

Assessing word-processing skills by event stream analysis

This paper derives the algorithms required to process the stream of textual events collected from a candidate's interaction with a word processor to produce an assessment of their word-processing skills. The information that can be extracted from the textual event stream is compared to that which can be deduced from a comparison of the candidate's submitted answer with the model answer(s) generated by the examiner. For many examinations, document comparison is simpler and more efficient than event stream analysis but it is not always possible to fully analyse errors from document comparison; hence a mixture of document comparison and event stream analysis is desirable for computer-based word-processing assessment

Trust and the automated assessment of IT skills

This paper discusses the problems of introducing automated assessment to an already existing set of IT skills examinations marked by human examiners, concentrating on issues of trust. The paper considers the issues which influence trust in traditional assessment, how the same issues differ for computer-based assessment and how the influence of the differences on trust can be minimised. Finally the paper discusses how future developments may be influenced by issues of trust

Information Technology Skills Assessment Techniques

There are two tasks associated with the assessment of IT skills; the discovery of errors and the classification of errors. The discovery of errors is a pattern matching task where a candidate attempt is synchronised with the model answer. The classification of the errors consists of applying sets of rules to regions of a candidate answer corresponding to regions of the model solution. A particular constraint in this type of assessment is that the results should be similar to those which would be produced by a human examiner. This paper describes the algorithms the authors have used in automating a number of assessors for the use of word processors, spreadsheets and databases and describes some of the problems of applying such algorithms in practic

Transforming instructions for IT skills exercises into specifications for assessment tests

The automated assessment of authentic Information Technology skills relies on testing candidate's output for conformity with the operations which should have been performed during the test. Since a test is unique, test specifications are unique to each test. This paper describes transformations which can be applied to the instructions given to the candidate to generate the test specifications which drive automated IT skills assessors