Carol Alexandru (Department of Computer Science, UZH) developed a great tool for large programming lectures.

Students directly edit/copy paste the programs that they have to provide for an exercise session into a browser tool (called Access), they can test run and correct as often as they want, there may be some unit test already put at their disposition at this stage. When they submit, the tool extensively uses unit tests and the corresponding error messages to check submissions and give feedback. Thus, this tool allows giving individualized feedback even in very large groups of students.

 

Carol uses python in his lecture, but the tool can also be implemented with other programming languages such as R (or other).

 

He will be be giving a workshop on April 8, 9:00-10:00. If you are interested to join, please contact David Schmocker for further details.