Providing accurate and timely feedback by automatically grading student programming labs

  • Authors:
  • Pete Nordquist

  • Affiliations:
  • Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

Providing accurate, meaningful, and timely feedback to student programming assignments is a daunting task. A new program, herein called the autograder, compiles and executes a student's submitted Java code and runs a set of instructor-written tests to validate the correctness of this code. The student is given a grade for their assignment and immediate feedback in both summary and log form, and these results are sent automatically to the server designated by the instructor. Students are able to run the autograder at any time during the development of their assignment, and may submit the same assignment multiple times. When the student has finished submitting their code, they may request the instructor's solution to the assignment, which the autograder immediately delivers to them. After a student receives the instructor's solution for a particular assignment, the autograder prevents any further submissions of that assignment from that student. The autograder is delivered over the web using Java Web Start technology, making it easy to update and deploy, and it is licensed under the GNU General Public License.