Evaluating the effect of the automatic assessment introduction in the ADS1 course practical work

The introduction of modern teaching and assessing approaches importantly enhance the quality of teaching. Apart beneficial effects such as effective knowledge presentation, better communication and easier practical work execution, changes include risk to ruin good results of well-established teaching routine. This paper is motivated by recent changes of the content, structure and assessing method of practical work of the Algorithms and Data Structures 1 course, which is taught at the FCIS at the University of Ljubljana. The most critical part was the introduction of automatic assessing of practical work as it considerably elevated the number of shorter tasks to be handed in on time by students. In our work the effect of such approach is objectively evaluated. First, the previous and current assessment data is used to examine the number and distribution of results for students involved in practical work. Second, the current grades are analyzed to check the correlation with previous grades obtained manually. Next, the results of a student questionnaire are presented, which confirm the successful introduction of new approach. Finally, our experience is summarized to support similar initiatives elsewhere.