Automatic Marking with Sakai

Large student numbers often drive teaching staff to consider greater degrees of automation of assessment activities. In introductory Computer Science classes - where submitted programs need to repeatedly be compiled, executed and tested - automation is an obvious route to investigate. This paper reports on an experimental automation system for assessing programming assignments, and its integration with the open source Sakai learning management system. While the system has been an administrative success, feedback from students has identified numerous areas for improvement at the interface of the student and the automatic marker. Furthermore, the use of automation has highlighted the need for teaching software development methodology from an early stage