Hi Chris,
I know Charlie Daly has done some good work on automated assessment of
programs in DCU (Dublin City University). I have provided references to
2 of his papers in the area.
In my experience the main work in automated assessment, is either on an
input/output (as seen the papers provided) basis , or using multiple
choice questions (as used by Lister).
I think the real difficulty in this area is awarding marks for
programming style.
Aside:
I recall once as an undergraduate we were set the task of writing a
winning algorithm for connect 4, my friend brute forced it with
something like 400 if-statements, while I did my best to get a nice
iterative solution. Marking was based 100% on performance, my friend and
his mammoth of code scored higher than me, as he had quite simply
dealt with every situation.
Papers:
@inproceedings{971375,
author = {Charlie Daly and John Waldron},
title = {Assessing the assessment of programming ability},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 35th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science
education},
year = {2004},
isbn = {1-58113-798-2},
pages = {210--213},
location = {Norfolk, Virginia, USA},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/971300.971375},
publisher = {ACM Press},
}
@inproceedings{305904,
author = {Charlie Daly},
title = {RoboProf and an introductory computer programming course},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSE conference on
Innovation and technology in computer science education},
year = {1999},
isbn = {1-58113-087-2},
pages = {155--158},
location = {Cracow, Poland},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/305786.305904},
publisher = {ACM Press},
}
Hope some of this helps,
Des
On Mon, 2004-10-18 at 08:53, Chris Douce wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is a two part question that is loosely related to the previous thread:
>
> Lets say I have a class of students performing a group of simple progamming
> assignments in Java (for sake of argument). By assignments I'm thinking of
> exercises that performs simple temperature conversion, calculate average rainfall,
> calculates a factorial, or a set of classes to exhibit a particular behaviour
> through published methods.
>
> Does anybody know of any papers that try to address the problem of automated (by
> computer) validation/checking of student programs, potentially providing feedback
> regarding student assignments? I appreciate that a lot of checking and validation
> is performed by a compiler (and the interesting error messages that are created),
> and that code can be automatically tested through a mechanism like JUnit, providing
> they are integrated into the software that is to be tested (and written properly)...
> Do you know whether anybody has investigated or implemented a more 'student
> friendly' mechanism for automated checking/validation of submitted programs which
> could be related to particular assignments or programming tasks?
>
> Also, if we have a sample program, does anyone know of a tutoring system that may
> assist students through the automatic generation of natural language questions
> derived from a submitted program text? I appreciate that most of the time a
> compiler facilitates the generation of these questions, through user
> interpretation...
>
> All references and comments greatfully appreciated,
>
> Many thanks.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
> Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
> PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce
PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
