CodeMaster – Automatic Assessment and Grading of App Inventor and Snap! Programs
The development of computational thinking is a major topic in K-12 education. Many of the current experiences focus on teaching programming using block-based languages. As part of these activities, it is important for students to receive feedback on their assignments. Yet, in practice it may be difficult to provide personalized, objective and consistent feedback. In this context, automatic assessment and grading has become important. While there exist diverse graders for text-based languages, support for block-based programming languages is still scarce.
CodeMaster is a free web application that in a problem-based learning context allows to automatically assess and grade projects programmed with App Inventor and Snap!.
Try it out!
It uses a rubric measuring Computational Thinking (CT) based on the CT framework presented by Brennan & Resnick (2012) and the mobile CT rubric (Sherman and Martin, 2015)(Sherman et al., 2014). These dimensions are measured by analyzing the source code of the programs created adopting static code analysis to measure the kind and number of blocks used in the program quantifying CT criteria such as control statement, data, interaction, etc. Then based on a rubric, the programming projects are assessed and a score and grade is assigned.
Students can use the tool to get feedback to encourage them to improve their programming competencies.
It can also be used by teachers for assessing whole classes easing their workload.
More information:
Gresse von Wangenheim, C., J. C. R. Hauck, Demetrio, M. F., Pelle, R., N. d. C. Alves, H. Barbosa, L. F. Azevedo. CodeMaster v1.0 – An Overview. Technical Report INCoD/GQS.17.2017.P, INCoD/INE/UFSC, Florianópolis/Brazil, November 2017.
Demetrio, M. F. Desenvolvimento de um analisador e avaliador de código de App Inventor para ensino de computação. 2017. Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso. (Graduação em Ciência da Computação) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.
Pelle, R. Desenvolvimento de um analisador e avaliador de código de SNAP! para ensino de computação. Project Thesis, Bachelor of Computer Science Course, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. (in progress)
