A Tool to Automate Student UML diagram Evaluation

Abstract

Unified modelling language (UML) is the accepted standard and modelling language for modeling in software development process. UML is widely used by most course tutors in teaching modules of software engineering and system analysis and design. Students taking such courses do submit assignments with UML diagrams such as use case, class, sequence, activity and so on. Different versions of such diagrams produced by the students for a given problem have to be assessed by the course tutor which is a challenging and time-consuming task. This paper presents a java-based tool which is developed based on a simple yet effective algorithm developed by the authors that will read student and tutors solution diagrams as inputs and evaluate and grade the diagrams automatically. The output of the tool is the score of the student diagram in respect of lecturer’s final solution. The output is presented in two feedback files, one containing students’ score for the lecturers and the other to be send to the student to note the areas that were incorrect. The tool has been tested and evaluated using a simple and assumed UML class diagram. The result shows that the tool functions effectively and can produce detail feedbacks for both students and tutors. The outcome of this paper contributes towards automating UML diagram evaluations.