Using strategies for assessment of programming exercises

Programming exercise assessment tools alleviate the task of teachers, and increase consistency of markings. Many programming exercise assessment tools are based on testing. A test-based assessment tool for programming exercises cannot ensure that a solution is correct. Moreover, it is difficult to test if a student has used good programming practices. This is unfortunate, because teachers want students to adopt good programming techniques. We propose to use strategies, in combination with program transformations, as a foundation for programming exercise assessment. Expert knowledge, in the form of model solutions, can be expressed as programming strategies. Using these strategies we can guarantee that a student program is equivalent to a model solution, and we can report which solution strategy has been used to solve the programming problem. Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.1 [Computer Uses in Education]: Computer-assisted instruction (CAI); K.3.2 [Computer and Information Scien...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: SIGCSE
• Authors: Alex Gerdes, Johan Jeuring, Bastiaan Heeren
• Keywords: Assessment Tool, Education, Exercise Assessment Tools, Programming Exercise Assessment, SIGCSE 2010