Model‐based automatic grading of object‐oriented programming assignments

Abstract

AbstractAutomatic grading of object‐oriented programming (OOP) assignments is an important problem from practical, theoretical, and educational viewpoints. Apart from computing a specific grade, an effective grading method needs to provide systematic feedback comments to both the design and code elements. Existing works have proposed grading methods that make various assumptions about the design. However, none of these methods have considered using a design language for the program model. A challenge here is to use a language that eases learning and application in program design. In this paper, we propose a novel grading method, named OOPGRADER, which automatically grades OOP assignments constructed based on an essentially detailed program model. This model is defined in an embedded design language, which directly uses the annotation feature of OOP language to express the essential design rules. We explain how programming assignments can be designed with this language and propose a program checker and a grader for both student and teacher to use in working on the assignments and in grading them. We implement these components in a tool and develop an Eclipse plugin for this tool. We evaluate our method using a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The main result is that our method helps students effectively learn to program through detailed feedback comments based on a program model. The tool is adaptable, has a good performance, and helps enhance the productivity of both students and teachers through IDE integration.