Author:
Edgar Seemann
Affiliation:
Furtwangen University, Germany
Keyword(s):
Online Courses, Computer Programming, Assessment, Grading, Teaching, Tutoring, Unit Testing.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Systems
;
Assessment Software Tools
;
Authoring Tools and Content Development
;
Computer-Aided Assessment
;
Computer-Supported Education
;
e-Learning
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Technologies Supporting Learning
;
Intelligent Tutoring Systems
;
Learning/Teaching Methodologies and Assessment
;
Web-Based Learning, Wikis and Blogs
Abstract:
Online courses raise many new challenges. It is particularly difficult to teach subjects, which focus on technical
principles and require students to practice. In order to motivate and support students we need to provide
assistance and feedback. When the number of students in online courses increases to several thousand participants
this assistance and feedback cannot be handled by the teaching staff alone. In this paper we propose
a system, which allows to automatically validate programming exercises at a fine-grained level using unit
tests. Thus, students get immediate feedback, which helps them understanding the encountered problems.
The proposed system offers a wide range of possible exercise types for programming exercises. These range
from exercises where students need to provide only code snippets to exercises including complex algorithms.
Moreover, the system allows teachers to grade student exercises automatically. Unlike common grading tools
for programming exercises, it ca
n deal with partial solutions and avoids an all-or-nothing style grading.
(More)