Not a Silver Bullet, but a Silver Lining: Metamorphic Marking Administration

COVID-19 has caused heart-break and disruption. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was one of the first severely-impacted countries, but also one of the first to attempt to return to normalcy. Education, including Higher Education—the context of this paper—was disrupted, and the impact of these disruptions continues to be felt. A small consolation, or silver lining, has been the incredible efforts and innovations made by teachers to overcome the COVID-19 challenges. One such innovation is described in this paper: Drawing on the traditions of Metamorphic Exploration and Testing, the authors applied two different approaches to resolving a technical administration problem related to the management of assessments and marks for undergraduate software engineering team projects. This took place at University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), a Sino-foreign Higher Education Institution (HEI) with a history of staff-student collaboration, and education innovation. This paper outlines the experience and the insights learned from it. In addition to being of general interest to education administrators, especially those involved with project and marking administration, the innovative use of Metamorphic Testing ideas to develop the solution will be particularly interesting to computer scientists and software engineers.