Without a formal process its hard to give any definite opinions about how Software Tools went. An informal survey carried out as part of a coursework about three quarters of the way through the course indicated that most students considered it easier than their other modules. However generally poor performance in the 8th and 9th courseworks which were considerably more challenging may have altered this.
I feel that most students who submitted every or most courseworks actually ended up with a mark about 10% higher than deserved by the impression of their ability gained from that work. The fact that a number of people failed and the course average was in the 50s actually reflects the large number of students who did not attempt every coursework.
There was a large amount of plagiarism in evidence as a result of which the coursework only nature of the module (which in general seemed popular) has been altered to include an exam. It is also my opinion, despite its popularity, that the module was over-assessed and in particular, I observed that even good students generally attempted the assessed exercise before the practice exercise rather than the other way round.
The students found the exercises on UNIX use, shell and CGI difficult while the CVS exercise was clearly very easy.