Dynamic Rate Limiting with TA-Bot in CS1

Abstract

Automated Assessment Tools (AATs) have been used in undergraduate CS education for decades at many universities. TA-Bot, a modular AAT, has existed in some form for 25 years serving thousands of students across multiple universities. Previous research has shown that the earlier students start assignments, the better scores they receive. TA-Bot implements a novel dynamic rate limiting system to incentivize earlier student submissions. As the assignment deadline approaches, the cooldown from when a student submits to when they can make their next submission increases. Thus, students who start earlier are given more opportunities for automated feedback than a student who started closer to the deadline. The experiment discussed used TA-Bot over two semesters involving 144 students in CS1. When the dynamic rate limiting was enabled, students tended to start assignments earlier.