Towards improving automated evaluation of Java program

Abstract

E-learning is gaining widespread use and is being used as importance method of education, particularly in higher education. Manual program evaluation by the instructor or expert is a time consuming process and subject to manual variations and errors. The automatic assessment and grading of student’s answers/assignments plays an important role in improving e-learning and providing relief to instructors from the time consuming and lengthy task of manually evaluating student’s assignments/computer programs and grading them. To address this problem, we have proposed a model for automated evaluation and grading of Java programs submitted by students during term work submission or practical examination. This research work focuses on automated evaluation of Java program using various parameters like number of compilation errors, correct output, lines of code, use of coding and naming conventions, cyclomatic, time and space complexity. The experimental results obtained from the initial prototype implementation are encouraging and validates the effectiveness of the proposed model.