Article

Drop Project: An automatic assessment tool for programming assignments

SoftwareX

Bruno P. Cipriano; Nuno Fachada; Pedro Alves — 2022

Key information

Authors:

Bruno P. Cipriano; Nuno Fachada (Nuno Fachada); Pedro Alves (Pedro Hugo de Queirós Alves)

Published in

June 2022

Abstract

Automated assessment tools (AATs) are software systems used in teaching environments to automate the evaluation of computer programs implemented by students. These tools can be used to stimulate the interest of computer science students in programming courses by providing quick feedback on their work and highlighting their mistakes. Despite the abundance of such tools, most of them are developed for a specific course and are not production-ready. Others lack advanced features that are required for certain pedagogical goals (e.g. Git integration) and/or are not flexible enough to be used with students having different computer literacy levels, such as first year and second year students. In this paper we present Drop Project (DP), an automated assessment tool built on top of the Maven build automation software. We have been using DP in our teaching activity since 2018, having received more than fifty thousand submissions between projects, classroom exercises, tests and homework assignments. The tool’s automated feedback has allowed us to raise the difficulty level of the course’s projects, while the grading process has become more efficient and consistent between different teachers. DP is an extensively tested, production-ready tool. The software’s code and documentation are available in GitHub under an open-source software license.

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Title of the publication container

SoftwareX

First page or article number

101079

Last page

101079

Volume

18

Fields of Science and Technology (FOS)

computer-and-information-sciences - Computer and information sciences

Publication language (ISO code)

eng - English

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