Automated assessment of Java programming assignments

Abstract

Manual grading of project assessments has always been a problem in any educational institute. Assessors have to go through each assignment one by one. It is very inconvenient to the assessor and is a very time consuming process depending on the student cohort population. Each assignment also is prone to human marking errors of the assessors, especially if the assignment gets larger. This project consists of a two distinct part web application aimed to provide an automated assessment tool to assist assessors of the in grading students’ assignments. At the same time, it would help also serve as a platform to help students dramatically improve their programming skills by giving constructive feedback. The main challenges of this tackled by this project are ensuring security, and providing good feedback and not limit student solutions. The system will feature a web based platform for students and professors. The web platform will provide a portal for students to submit their assignments and obtain instant feedback about their assignment. At the same time, the web platform allows professors to set programming assignments easily as well as to collect statistics about the students submitted assignments.