Autograders for C and C++ Assignments

MQP Opportunities for 2015-2016
Professor Hugh C. Lauer

We have used autograders very successfully in CS-2011, Machine Organization and Assembly Language. These provide better and more consistent feedback to students than traditionally constructed assignments. Moreover, they allow instructors and teaching assistants to concentrate on course material and problems, rather than spending a lot of time manually grading individual assignments.

For the academic year 2015-2016, I would like to explore the use of autograders for the two “system programming courses” at WPI, namely CS-2301 using the C programming language, and CS-2303 using both C and C++.

In this MQP, the student(s) will carry out and document a comprehensive study of autograding methods used at other universities, particularly appropriate to these languages. Based on this study, one or more programming assignments will be designed to be suitable for autograding and a prototype autograder will be implemented.