DEI-CHECK. Automating the assessment process to improve the informative feedback

Acquiring and developing programming knowledge is a highly complex process. It involves a variety of cognitive activities and mental depictions. Hence, programming courses are generally regarded as difficult, and often have the highest dropout taxes. Such problem is especially significant in introductory programming courses: novice programmers need to apply the programming concepts continuously to understand them. Besides, beginner students often fail to recognize their own deficiencies and oversights. In this context, early assessment and continuous feedback are essential activities to correct mistakes and confusions. The purpose of this paper is to present our experience in teaching introductory programming courses as a case study. The course design is based on a specific assessment tool for introductory programming exercises. The tool aims at improving the assessment activity, facilitating its management and automating the communication flow in order to reduce the assessment process time-span. The final goal of our work is to increase feedback and improve the rectification of errors and misunderstandings from learners. The paper includes both the description of our assessment tool and the evaluation of its features.