Automated Assessment of Android Exercises with Cloud-native Technologies

Daniel Bruzual, Maria L. Montoya Freire, Mario Di Francesco

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference article in proceedingsScientificpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)
159 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Mobile applications are very challenging to test as they usually have a complex graphical user interface and advanced functionality that involves interacting with remote services. Due to these features, student assessment in courses about mobile application development usually relies on assignments or projects that are manually checked by teaching assistants for grading. This approach clearly does not scale to large classrooms, especially for online courses. This article presents a novel system for automated assessment of Android exercises with cloud-native technologies. Different from the state of the art, the proposed solution leverages a mobile app testing framework that is largely used in the industry instead of custom libraries. Furthermore, the devised system employs software containers and scales with the availability of resources in a data center, which is essential for massive open online courses. The system design and implementation is detailed, together with the results from a deployment within a master-level course with 120 students. The received feedback demonstrates that the proposed solution was effective, as it provided insightful feedback and supported independent learning of mobile application development.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationITiCSE 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
PublisherACM
Pages40-46
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781450368742
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jun 2020
MoE publication typeA4 Conference publication
EventAnnual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education - Trondheim, Norway
Duration: 15 Jun 202019 Jun 2020
Conference number: 25

Publication series

NameAnnual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE
ISSN (Print)1942-647X

Conference

ConferenceAnnual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
Abbreviated titleITiCSE
Country/TerritoryNorway
CityTrondheim
Period15/06/202019/06/2020

Keywords

  • android
  • automated grading
  • computer science education
  • full-stack
  • mobile app development
  • online learning
  • software containers
  • UI testing

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