System for Automated Assistance in Correction of Programming Exercises (SAC)
Benjamin Auffarth, Maite López-Sánchez, Jordi Campos Miralles, Anna Puig · 2008
In university programming classes often hundreds of students participate having to solve each hundreds of programming assignments a situation which puts instructors to the difficult task of validating hundreds of programming assignments. We present a framework that can help instructors and students in organization and validation of program code. Our “System for Automated Assistance in Correction of Programming Exercises “ (short: SAC) is a web-platform for test-driven development and automated validation. The web-platform is based on Java Server Pages technology with tomcat as servlet container, and allows teachers to specify and define program exercises and students to upload their solutions. Students can get immediate feedback on the validity of their code and both instructors and students can see statistics about each programming assignment. We explain our platform and propose how the automatic validation can be extended. Key words: Computer aided assessment, Source code evaluation, Computer Science, Education 1 Computer aided assessment for programming courses In programming courses students should learn to solve problems producing appropriate, compilable, working, and efficient program code. Assessment in programming classes must conform to these objectives testing the students ’ ability to create programs. Typically students receive a number of problems as take–home assignments or in–class activity (charrette) during a course demanding the students to