Automated Exercises

The goal of the Automated Exercises project is to create an automated assessment exercise framework which will allow instructors to build a number of different exercises for the Formal Languages course by uploading a JFLAP file to an OpenDSA textbook. The project will impact both instructors and students. Instructors will use it to build different exercises for students that will eliminate the time and effort to grade these exercises manually. Students will use these exercises to practice more on different topics, as time is available. The final product will eventually have to complete generating exercises, auto-grade exercises, and store students' answers and grades in an OpenDSA database.

To complete the project, we needed to utilize some basic web design language, such as HTML or JavaScript. We had to complete being able to generate, complete, and grade the exercises for all the topics required, including NFA/DFA and PDA. However, the editor in Turing Machine needs more work. The platform should be easily manageable and configurable because the clients, Dr. Mostafa Mohammed and other instructors and students, could make heavy use of this software. We need to make it as easy as possible. The UI part of the platform is mostly designed, and we added more buttons and features to make it useful. However, aesthetics are not our focus since only the instructor would be dealing with our designed platform, whereas the student would be doing exercises on the OpenDSA platform. Data input is for the instructor to upload a JFLAP file to the site and it will be converted to JSON file for the auto grading system. Then, the auto grading system takes the answers of the student to check the correctness in each case, and the result will be shown underneath the graph in a table. The result of the test would be stored into an object inside the exercise grader and shown on the screen as a form of alert, containing attempts, test results, highest scores, and time consumed.

The attached presentation and report give details of the project, including our milestones, objectives, methods and lessons learned.