Using strategies for assessment of programming exercises

  • Authors:
  • Alex Gerdes;Johan T. Jeuring;Bastiaan J. Heeren

  • Affiliations:
  • Open Universiteit Nederland, Heerlen, Netherlands;Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands;Open Universiteit Nederland, Heerlen, Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Programming exercise assessment tools alleviate the task of teachers, and increase consistency of markings. Many programming exercise assessment tools are based on testing. A test-based assessment tool for programming exercises cannot ensure that a solution is correct. Moreover, it is difficult to test if a student has used good programming practices. This is unfortunate, because teachers want students to adopt good programming techniques. We propose to use strategies, in combination with program transformations, as a foundation for functional programming exercise assessment. Expert knowledge, in the form of model solutions, can be expressed as programming strategies. Using these strategies we can guarantee that a student program is equivalent to a model solution, and we can report which solution strategy has been used to solve the programming problem.