An Open-Source System for Generating and Computer Grading Traditional Non-Coding Assignments

Abstract

One of the most time-consuming activities in higher education is reviewing and grading student evaluations. Rapid and effective feedback of evaluations, along with an appropriate assessment strategy, can significantly improve students’ performance. Furthermore, academic dishonesty is a major issue in higher education that has been aggravated by the limitations derived from the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the possible ways to mitigate this issue is to give different evaluations to each student, with the negative cost of increasing reviewing time. In this work, an open-source system developed in Python to automatically create and correct evaluations is presented. Using Jupyter Notebook as the graphical user interface, the system allows the creation of individual student question sheets, with the same structure and different parameter values, to send them to students, grade them, and send the final score back to the students. The proposed system requires little programming knowledge for the instructors to use it. The system was applied in Civil Engineering and Geological Engineering programs at the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción, drastically reducing grading time while improving students’ performance.