ASAP Automated System for the Assessment of Programming

ASAP Automated System for the Assessment of Programming

Project Motivation • address the issues of teaching a technically demanding subject with discipline-specific requirements including – Increasing class sizes – Widening participation – Evolving content

ASAP objectives • Publish appropriate standards for unit tests in educational sector • Publish tools for authoring and using unit tests • Looking at working closely with JPlag (Plagiarism Detection) and Robo. Prof (Question Generation) from project partners

Design • Service based architecture – the JISC elearning framework • Standards – XML, WSDL, XML, SOAP • Technologies and Tools – J 2 EE, Apache Axis, CVS • User Agents – Blackboard, Web. CT

Automated Assessment Service • • • Instructor creates (or edits) test documents in the unit test repository (1, 2) Student accesses document and attempts assignment (formative or summative) Solution is submitted (4) and evaluated using the assessment service [private unit tests] (5) The result communicated to the student (6) and the database of student marks (7) Instructors view details of assessments (8)

Use Case

Associated Services • Partners providing complimentary services • JPlag – Provides Plagiarism testing on submitted code • Roboprof (Dublin) – Provides Objective Assessment

User Agents • Generic Web Portal – Initial interface to ASAP – Evolving from a test environment • Blackboard v 6 (Kingston / de Montfort) • Web-CT v 2 (City University)

TAPAS • First stage of project • Prototype system • Currently being tested for Java Programming Assessment at Kingston University • 1 st Gen. Self-serve • 2 nd Gen. Asses. Server • 3 rd Gen - WSDL • 4 th Gen - e. LF?

TAPAS • Precursor to ASAP • Internally funded • Assessment Server – Provides unit testing to assess Java program code • Blackboard Building Block – VLE ‘User Agent’ – Communicates with assessment server – Instructor: uploads testing code and assignment – Learner: Downloads assignment – Uploads source code – Assessment server compiles and tests – Gives feedback and uploads results to Blackboard gradebook

Blackboard Interface

Automated Java Marker Server

Feedback from service