The evolution of data processing at UKOU appears to be falling into three stages. It was clear that to follow the admissions system, a system of student records was the next step. Then, as the institution developed its strategies, we found the need for systems to maintain records of the growing number of part-time staff becoming tutors and counsellors, and systems to process students' assignments. As is now generally known, the University adopted a dual assignment policy, using traditional tutor-marked assignments allied to objective testing marked by computer. Year-end procedures provide perhaps the most noteworthy example of using data processing to achieve results impossible by less sophisticated means.
All undergraduate students start and finish their courses at the same time.
The consequence of this audacious simplicity of academic planning is an administrative problem of outstanding magnitude. A nationwide campaign of examinations culminates in the recording by the computer of a hundred thousand examination scores, their analysis and standardization, and their combination in various ways with the results of over half a million assignments. This, again, must be accomplished in days rather than weeks, so that reallocation to the next year's courses can go ahead on schedule. This machine could be seen as the apotheosis of the central data resource philosophy. Then, in 1975, began the work of redesigning systems to take advantage of the new facilities.