Master Thesis - Past Projects - Abstract

Development of an examination system

ID: LiTH-IDA-Ex-00/73

Examining programming courses is still mostly done using paper and pen. Today this seems odd and out of date. A better way of examination would be that the students could sit by their computers, programming just as they do otherwise. To correct programs on paper takes lots of time, especially if there are many students. A better way would be to correct, online, the files that the student has created (online). This thesis is about constructing a program that makes it possible to do this and take full advantages of the technology in other ways, for example with immediate feedback and correction, interactivity, and possibility for the student to ask the teacher questions throughout the examination. This thesis contains background material needed, the design, implementation and testing of such a system. The testing shows that the system was not quite finished within the time frame of this masters thesis. The reasons for this are discussed. Due to hard stability requirements there is lots of discussion about how this should be achieved. Since stability is the main goal, Ada95 was chosen as implementation language and since it lacks functionality for network and graphic capabilities the thesis demonstrates a solution to these problems, and shows that Ada95 is a modern and very capable language.

Keywords: Authentic examination, on-line examination system, Ada, Client-server

Author(s): Håkan Oswaldsson

Contact: Simin Najdm-Tehrani