APOGEE: a tool for automated grading programming projects

This automated grading tool, APOGEE, implemented a trial-and-failure learning strategy. The idea is simple: given a sophisticated course project, let students try project submissions as many times as they want before the project deadline. For each submission, a thorough inspection is performed by an automated grading system called APOGEE. A student project has to accomplish not only the functional requirements but also many desired quality attributes such as robustness and security. A grading report is generated instantly within several minutes. The report starts with a summary, e.g., the grade and timestamp. Then the report contains an itemized list of test cases. The running results of test cases are classified into two categories: the passed and the failed. For each test case, clicking the corresponding link redirects a viewer to the test case report. This workshop provides an opportunity for educators to explore the automated grading tool and discuss requirements for its implementation in their colleges/universities. A general Trial-and-Failure approach in teaching of programming classes will be discussed [1]. The authors will present an Automated Grading Tool - APOGEE, which is based on the mentioned above approach [2]-[5]. This tool was developed with support of the NSF Grant (DUE-0836859, 0837275, and 0837020 - Collaborative Research: A Trial-and-Failure Project Tutoring System) and currently implemented in nine universities and colleges. APOGEE consists of five major components: (1) a class management module, (2) a project specification tool for instructors to create test cases, (3) a grading engine that invokes the WatiN library for evaluating student projects, (4) a back-end database, and (5) a project report generator. At this moment, APOGEE grades web programming projects only. The participants, during the workshop, will be able to run APOGEE on the virtual labs, located in Hofstra or Georgia Southwestern State University. The students, research assistants, will help to set it up and run APOGEE; hands on materials will be distributed as well, APOGEE is a free tool and can be downloaded along with the instructor and student manuals from the following website [6].