deploying interactive e-labs for a course on operating systems
Automatic assessment of laboratory assignments is a powerful technique to improve how students understand the body of knowledge of conventional information technology courses. Also, teaching techniques such as competitive programming, games and puzzles motivate students and increase their probability of becoming successful learners. In this paper a set of assignments that combine automatic assessment and competitive programming is presented in the context of a course on operating systems. Aside from the theory sessions, students are required to write C programs. A set of assessments is given, each of them with a clearly stated performance criteria. Upon arrival, all submissions are automatically processed and ranked depending on their performance. A web page is regularly updated with the ranked submissions plus additional remarks on how to improve them. Empirical results show that students make several submissions for each assignment to first achieve a correct solution and then gradually obtain performance improvements.
automatic assessment competitive programming e-laboratories