An Elastic Platform for Large-scale Assessment of Software Assignments for MOOCs (EPLASAM)

To address this efficiency and the resulting inherent scalability problems of Learning-at-Scale, this chapter propose a platform called SPLAShED: Software Platform for Large-Scale Assessment of Software-Development for Education-at-a-Distance, that uses Linux containers to provide OS-level virtualization. This gives each desired service the equivalent of a Virtual Private Server (VPS) that creates a temporary private userspace on the server. Each VPS provides a separate working environment for each desired application, but does not incur the overhead of traditional virtualization techniques. Our SPLAShED platform applies recent advances in Linux container deployment automation, resources isolation, portability, and usability. These advances enable the SPLAShED platform to serve both as. This chapter explores assignments as a case study: an Android based software design assignment. This case study shows how the SPLAShED platform will able to accommodate and facilitate advanced Software Development courses with features and abilities currently not available.