PeyShan Heng, Mike Joy, Russell Boyatt and Nathan Griffiths, Evaluation of the BOSS Online Submission and Assessment System, September, 2005
Computer programming lends itself to automated assessment. With appropriate software tools program correctness can be measured, along with an indication of quality according to a set of metrics. Furthermore, the regularity of program code allows plagiarism detection to be an integral part of the tools that support assessment. In this paper, we consider a submission and assessment system, called BOSS, that supports coursework assessment through collecting submissions, performing automatic tests for correctness and quality, checking for plagiarism, and providing an interface for marking and delivering feedback. We present the results of evaluating the tool from three perspectives --- technical, usability, and pedagogy.