ECAutoAssessmentBox

ECAutoAssessmentBox is derived from ECAssignmentBox and adds support for automatic testing of student submissions, e.g., for programming assignments.

Project Description

ECAutoAssessmentBox is derived from ECAssignmentBox and was originally developed to allow students to submit their solutions for programming assignments via the Web at any time during the submission period and get immediate feedback.

Automatic testing and assessment of assignments is handled by ECSpooler, a Web-based service which manages a submission queue and several backends. Backends are also Web-based services, which encapsulate the testing functions for a specific type of assignments.

The exact testing strategy implemented by a backend depends on the application: For example, when testing programming assignments, the output of a student solution can be compared to that of a model solution for a set of test data, or the assignment can be tested for properties which must be fulfilled by correct programs. Currently implemented are backends for Haskell, Scheme, Erlang, Prolog, Python, and Java. However, with the appropriate backends, the system can also be used to test submissions in other formal notations or to analyze natural-language assignments (we have already experimented with style checking and keyword spotting).

For students, ECAutoAssessmentBox works like ECAssignmentBox, except that they get automatic feedback for their submissions. When a student submits a program, it is routed to the backend specified by the teacher for this assignment. The results of the tests performed by the backend are immediately returned and displayed.

[instance]
eggs =
    ...
    Products.ECAutoAssessmentBox