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Language Technology Group (LT)
Department of InformaticsLanguage Technology Group (LT)

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MINFIT

MINFIT - Automatic Correction of Programming Assignments

The project addresses the considerable differences in programming skills of computer science students. This is achieved by introducing programming tasks in the compulsory lecture “Algorithms and Data Structures”. This shall lead to higher levels in programming skills in later courses and improves the national and international competitiveness of the computer science degree at UHH.
In order to be able to evaluate the programming tasks, automation is applied to itself: The subject of this teaching laboratory project is the introduction of an automatic correction tool for programming tasks, which enables students to get feedback for their programming solutions, without a significant increase in effort on the side of the teaching staff.

The use of automatic correction tools for programming tasks is not uncommon in basic computer science studies and is already practiced at many universities in Germany and abroad. There are a number of tools, which handle different programming languages and different possibilities of the integration into electronic teaching platforms.

The concept takes up the strategic goal of the department to strengthen the programming knowledge of computer science students by offering them - in addition to the compulsory programming tasks in the software engineering modules - also in the theory module “Algorithms and Data Structures”. Since this lecture focuses on theory and now also on implementation of algorithmic core concepts, while software engineering is concerned with the integration of program libraries and the operation of development environments, there is no duplication of content; the offers are to be seen as complementary, since they address different aspects of computer programming.

Download the flyer from November 2019 about the CodeRunner project (in German).

Runtime: January 2019 – December 2020

Funding agency: BMBF via MINFIT

Volume: E13 50% technical assistance for 2 years

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Publications and Datasets

  • Soll, M., Kobras, L., Johannsen, M., Biemann, C. (2020): Enhancing a Theory Focused Course Through the Introduction of Automatically Assessed Programming Exercises – Lessons Learned. Proceedings of the Impact Papers at EC-TEL 2020 (pdf)
  • AD 2019 Programming Assignments Dataset