Peter C. Isaacson

Automated grading assistance for student programs

Some instructors have used various sofiware tools to assist in the task of evaluating student programming assignments. The ability to collect students’ work in a consistent form and test it automatically against a wide range of data can enhance students’ skills in program design, coding, analysis, and testing, and can free the instructor from much tedium, allowing more time for more rewarding activities.

Computerized Indices for Evaluating Student Response Patterns.

AbstractStudent response patterns can provide insights into individual student problems as well as subgroup differences. This paper describes the development of indices for overall aberrancy, tendencies to miss relatively easy items (possible bias, lack of concentration, test anxiety, etc.), tendencies to get correct more difficult items than would be expected based on the total score (possible guessing or unusual learning patterns), and a combination that tells how the latter two tendencies do or do not balance each other. Test results for 368 math students were used to demonstrate the indices. The software is available.

A common user software interface for shared microcomputers

A description is given of a common user software interface for shared PC/MS-DOS microcomputers. This interface provides for both user productivity features and hardware and software protection. In an attempt to leave maximum flexibility for advanced users but provide the common interface across all PC MS-DOS microcomputers, adding functionality from existing and some created components was chosen over a DOS menu shell like QDOS. The starting point for examining the common interface is the normal startup time configuration files. Specifically, these files are the standard CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. The former file is fairly standard, while the latter file encompasses a major part of the common interface.<<ETX>>