Process Support and Document Management System for Automation of an Academic Assignment

The Essay Circle, created by Guy Haworth, challenges a student cohort of any size to pick and own their individual essay topic from a list, write an essay and constructively review two others. The students can achieve the valuable pedagogic goals of learning about module-subject scope and content, being proactive, researching, critiquing, avoiding plagiarism and communicating effectively. The problem is that allocating topics, moving documents around and progress-chasing consumes a lot of the assignment setter’s time – but can, in principle, be done automatically. This project aims to solve this problem, investigating and researching systems which automate processes, analysing the specific requirements, and designing and implementing a new system which takes the assignment setter as far ‘out of the loop’ as possible. The target system manages processes and documents from the point of topic selection by the student, to the final completion and return of the essay to the assignment setter.