  In this paper, we present a novel approach of automated evaluation of
programming assignments~(AEPA) the highlight of which is that it automatically
identifies multiple solution approaches to the programming question from the
set of submitted solutions. Our approach does not require the instructor to
foresee all the possible solution approaches and accomplishes this task with
little or no human intervention. This paves the way to multiple fundamental
improvements in the way automated evaluation of programming assignments is done
today. We have applied our method on multiple data sets of practical scale. In
all cases, our method was able to detect the solution approaches employed by
the students.
