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This paper presents an innovative method to tackle the automatic evaluation of programming assignments with an approach based on well-founded assessment theories (Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT)) instead of heuristic assessment as in other systems. CTT and/or IRT are used to grade the results of different items of evidence obtained from students’ results. The methodology consists of considering program proofs as items, calibrating them, and obtaining the score using CTT and/or IRT procedures. These procedures measure overall validity reliability as well as diagnose the quality of each proof (item). The evidence is obtained through program proofs. The SIETTE system collects and processes all data to calculate the student knowledge level. This innovative method for programming task evaluation makes it possible to deploy the whole artillery developed in this research field over the last few decades. To the best of our knowledge, this is a new and original contribution in the area of programming assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: A systematic approach to MATLAB problem design and automated assessment is described, based on the experience working with the MATLAB server provided by MathWorks and integrated with the edX massive online open class (MOOC) platform. Background: New technologies, such as MOOCs, provide innovative methods to tackle new challenges in teaching and learning. However, they also bring challenges in course delivery and assessment, due to factors such as less direct student–instructor interaction. These challenges are especially severe in engineering education, which relies heavily on experiential learning, such as laboratory exercises and computer simulations, to assist students in understanding concepts. As a result, effective design of experiential learning components is extremely critical for engineering MOOCs. Intended Outcomes: This paper shares the experience gained through developing and offering an MOOC on communication systems, with special focus on the development and the automated assessment of MATLAB exercises for active concept learning. Application Design: The proposed approach introduced students to concepts by using learning components commonly provided by many MOOC platforms (e.g., online lectures and quizzes), and augmented the student experience with MATLAB-based computer simulations and exercises to enable more concrete and detailed understanding of the material. Findings: The effectiveness of the instructional methods was supported by evaluation of students’ learning performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although every educational institution has a code of academic honesty, they still encounter incidents of plagiarism. These are difficult and time-consuming to detect and deal with. This paper explores the use of personalized assessments with the goal of reducing incidents of plagiarism, proposing a personalized assessment software framework through which each student receives a unique problem set. The framework not only auto-generates the problem set but also auto-marks the solutions when submitted. The experience of using this framework is discussed, from the perspective of both students and staff, particularly with respect to its ability to mitigate plagiarism. A comparison of personalized and traditional assignments in the same class confirms that the former had far fewer observed plagiarism incidents. Although personalized assessment may not be cost-effective in all courses (such as language courses), it still can be effective in areas such as mathematics, engineering, science, and computing. This paper concludes that personalized assessment is a promising approach to counter plagiarism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The goal of the distributed systems (DS) laboratory is to provide an attractive environment in which students learn about network programming and apply some fundamental concepts of distributed systems. In the last two years, students had to implement a fully functional peer-to-peer file sharing system called ShareMe. This paper presents the approach the authors used to provide the best possible support and guidance for the students while keeping up with ever-rising participant numbers in the laboratory course (approximately 600 last year), as well as managing budget and personnel constraints. The learning environment is based on Web and Internet technologies and not only offers the description of the laboratory tasks but also covers electronic submission, a discussion forum, automatic grading, and online access to grading and test results. The authors report their experiences of using the automated grading system, the amount of work required to prepare and run the laboratory, and how they deal with students who submit plagiarized solutions. Furthermore, the results of student feedback and evaluation forms are presented, and the overall student course satisfaction is discussed. Detailed information about the DS laboratory is available at http ://www.dslab.tuwienac.at [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactive online tutorials are used in an introductory circuits class as an adjunct to traditional educational delivery. The online behavior of the students was monitored using Web-based parameter-passing strategies and cookies. The authors found that most students repeated the tutorials a sufficient number of times to get perfect scores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]