CSSE1001 is the first-year programming course at UQ and teaches ~2000 students a year. Tooling around assessment marking is incredibly valuable for the university, as:
- Tutor marking is one of the biggest drains on course budget
- Running student code locally on tutor machines is a security risk
- High quality tooling can facilitate more accurate and consistent grades across the cohort.
Historically, The course staff had automated functionality marking for some assessment pieces, but when it came to assessment that required Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), the original tooling became insufficient, and tutors would revert to manually running student code.
Persephia subsequently built bespoke testing software that allows for automated testing of python GUIs, and integrates with Gradescope. As a result of this effort:
- Students would now get persistent feedback on their progress while implementing GUI assignments
- The tutor staff could avoid running student code on their machines during marking
- A portion of the budget for assessment marking was saved.