Exploring the Use of XPath Queries for Automated Assessment of Student Web Development Projects

Abstract

Web development courses are core to Information Technology (IT) and Computer Science (CS) curriculums. As a result, hundreds of students each semester enroll in these courses to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This burdens faculty with the need to grade tens or hundreds of web assignments each semester. Few tools exist to automate the grading of such assignments. This research explores the use of XPath queries, which may be used to evaluate HTML documents due to their loose relationship to XML. A web application was constructed to graphically define XPath queries, then provided to web development faculty to regrade past assignments. Based on faculty feedback, it was determined that XPath queries are capable of limited grading of HTML document against past assignments. However, by designing new assignments tailored for automated grading and by enhancing the web application with additional features, it is clear a significant portion, if not all, of the HTML documents for a web development assignment may be automatically graded.