Automated Marking in Undergraduate Programming Classes

Martin Hugh Goodfellow, Andrew Abel, Konstantinos Liaskos, John Levine

Abstract: Growing undergraduate class sizes has led to exploring different approaches to marking individual programming assignments. One of these approaches is automated marking. This paper details how automated marking was successfully utilised in multiple undergraduate classes, with a programming element, at the University of Strathclyde. We made use of two automated systems, CodeRunner, and one similar in-house system, Browser Automated Marking (BAMjs), developed by a former teaching associate Philip Rodgers. These were used across years 1-3 and assessed the Java, Python and C programming languages. We provide some example questions, discuss how its use has affected student performance, as well as student feedback on the approach.