Automatic submission and administration of programming assignments

Abstract

This paper details a system to assist with the evaluation and administration of student assignments. In order to help with the evaluation of program execution, the system automatically compiles and executes the program while logging a copy of the session. This log, together with the code and documentation is then bundled into an e-mail which is sent to the course controller.The course controller automatically processes the email, verifying it's authenticity, and sends an acknowledgement back to the student. The controller also automatically logs the submission in a database which is used to monitor student performance throughout the year. Additional facilities are provided to allow grades for the assignments to be entered into the database, to allow students to be excused from assignments if appropriate and to allow summary reports to be generated.

Automated evaluation of regular lab assignments: A bittersweet experience?

“…Unfortunately only a few studies [5], [3] focus on more general questions related to the issue of automated student assessment as is the impact to students and teaching process itself. There is available a plethora of studies presenting various submission and evaluation systems as [2], [4], and [6], but authors of these studies focus mostly on a technical description of particular submission and evaluation features of presented systems. A detailed overview of similar studies is available in [6].…”

A marking language for the oto assignment marking tool

“…2 The student can also submit his/her assignment (submit_assignment) in the submission box created by the instructor (create_box).…”

“…Various tools providing support for marking programming assignments are available: tools dealing with administrative aspects (submission and management of assignments) [2], metrics-based evaluation [11], testing of programs [3,8], etc.-see [13,Sect. 2] for a more detailed presentation of these and other tools.…”

A small and secure submission system for UNIX systems

“…One retrospective study suggests that a straightforward, manual e-mail based system is simply too time-consuming; Jones observed in his department's first use of homework submission via e-mail that "... the lack of automation in the process generated more work for the lecturer than with the traditional approach [3]." Subsequent automated schemes have emerged, such as that of DawsonHowe [2], that include the tracking and storing of e-mail submissions. Unfortunately the recent rise of spam blockers and virus filters on school e-mail systems, and the inherent insecurity of unencrypted e-mail, has complicated the use of using e-mail as a submission medium.…”