Computer Aided Design and Grading for an Electronic Functional Programming Exam

Electronic exams (e-exams) have the potential to substantially reduce the effort required for conducting an exam through automation. Yet, care must be taken to sacrifice neither task complexity nor constructive alignment nor grading fairness in favor of automation. To advance automation in the design and fair grading of (functional programming) e-exams, we introduce the following: A novel algorithm to check Proof Puzzles based on finding correct sequences of proof lines that improves fairness compared to an existing, edit distance based algorithm; an open-source static analysis tool to check source code for task relevant features by traversing the abstract syntax tree; a higher-level language and open-source tool to specify regular expressions that makes creating complex regular expressions less error-prone. Our findings are embedded in a complete experience report on transforming a paper exam to an e-exam. We evaluated the resulting e-exam by analyzing the degree of automation in the grading process, asking students for their opinion, and critically reviewing our own experiences. Almost all tasks can be graded automatically at least in part (correct solutions can almost always be detected as such), the students agree that an e-exam is a fitting examination format for the course but are split on how well they can express their thoughts compared to a paper exam, and examiners enjoy a more time-efficient grading process while the point distribution in the exam results was almost exactly the same compared to a paper exam.Comment: In Proceedings TFPIE 2023, arXiv:2308.0611

Programming assignments automatic grading: review of tools and implementations

Automatic grading of programming assignments is an important topic in academic research. It aims at improving the level of feedback given to students and optimizing the professor time. Several researches have reported the development of software tools to support this process. Then, it is helpfulto get a quickly and good sight about their key features. This paper reviews an ample set of tools forautomatic grading of programming assignments. They are divided in those most important mature tools, which have remarkable features; and those built recently, with new features. The review includes the definition and description of key features e.g. supported languages, used technology, infrastructure, etc. The two kinds of tools allow making a temporal comparative analysis. This analysis infrastructure, etc. The two kinds of tools allow making a temporal comparative analysis. This analysis shows good improvements in this research field, these include security, more language support, plagiarism detection, etc. On the other hand, the lack of a grading model for assignments is identified as an important gap in the reviewed tools. Thus, a characterization of evaluation metrics to grade programming assignments is provided as first step to get a model. Finally new paths in this research field are proposed

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Jutge.org: characteristics and experiences

Jutge.org is an open educational online programming judge designed for students and instructors, featuring a repository of problems that is well organized by courses, topics and difficulty. Internally, Jutge.org uses a secure and efficient architecture and integrates modern verification techniques, formal methods, static code analysis and data mining. Jutge.org has exhaustively been used during the last decade at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya to strengthen the learn-by-doing approach in several courses. This paper presents the main characteristics of Jutge.org and shows its use and impact in a wide range of courses covering basic programming, data structures, algorithms, artificial intelligence, functional programming and circuit design.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Unit Testing Challenges with Automated Marking

Teaching software testing presents difficulties due to its abstract and conceptual nature. The lack of tangible outcomes and limited emphasis on hands-on experience further compound the challenge, often leading to difficulties in comprehension for students. This can result in waning engagement and diminishing motivation over time. In this paper, we introduce online unit testing challenges with automated marking as a learning tool via the EdStem platform to enhance students' software testing skills and understanding of software testing concepts. Then, we conducted a survey to investigate the impact of the unit testing challenges with automated marking on student learning. The results from 92 participants showed that our unit testing challenges have kept students more engaged and motivated, fostering deeper understanding and learning, while the automated marking mechanism enhanced students' learning progress, helping them to understand their mistakes and misconceptions quicker than traditional-style human-written manual feedback. Consequently, these results inform educators that the online unit testing challenges with automated marking improve overall student learning experience, and are an effective pedagogical practice in software testing.Comment: 5 pages, accepted at the 30th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC 2023

2016-2017 Course Catalog

An annual catalog of courses and course descriptions offered at the University of Montana.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/coursecatalogs_asc/1047/thumbnail.jp

2009-2010 Course Catalog

An annual catalog of courses and course descriptions offered at the University of Montana.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/coursecatalogs_asc/1040/thumbnail.jp