Automated Assessment of Android Exercises with Cloud-native Technologies

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Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Conference article in proceedings
Date
2020-06-15
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
7
40-46
Series
ITiCSE 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE
Abstract
Mobile applications are very challenging to test as they usually have a complex graphical user interface and advanced functionality that involves interacting with remote services. Due to these features, student assessment in courses about mobile application development usually relies on assignments or projects that are manually checked by teaching assistants for grading. This approach clearly does not scale to large classrooms, especially for online courses. This article presents a novel system for automated assessment of Android exercises with cloud-native technologies. Different from the state of the art, the proposed solution leverages a mobile app testing framework that is largely used in the industry instead of custom libraries. Furthermore, the devised system employs software containers and scales with the availability of resources in a data center, which is essential for massive open online courses. The system design and implementation is detailed, together with the results from a deployment within a master-level course with 120 students. The received feedback demonstrates that the proposed solution was effective, as it provided insightful feedback and supported independent learning of mobile application development.
Description
Keywords
android, automated grading, computer science education, full-stack, mobile app development, online learning, software containers, UI testing
Other note
Citation
Bruzual , D , Montoya Freire , M L & Di Francesco , M 2020 , Automated Assessment of Android Exercises with Cloud-native Technologies . in ITiCSE 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education . Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE , ACM , pp. 40-46 , Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education , Trondheim , Norway , 15/06/2020 . https://doi.org/10.1145/3341525.3387430