Automated grading assignments in programming – advantages, problems and effects on learning

Abstract

E-education is having a great growth in the last few years. It is obvious that the need for e-learning software is growing. In the process of learning, grading assignments is one of the most important activities. Grading, programming languages and environments are not standard across different educational facilities, that’s why many tools for grading are made especially for one or a set of courses. While there are several tools that are made for universal use, often they don’t support all features that are needed for different courses. In this paper, reasons for automatization of grading activity will be presented, but also problems and considerations which must be resolved while developing such a system. Also, a model for grading complex programming assignments will be presented, which should provide the necessary flexibility for most of the courses.