UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

Analysis, Design, Development, and Deployment of a Generalized Framework for Computer-Aided Assessment

A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science
in
Computer Science
by
Titus Delafayette Winters
June 2004

Thesis Committee:
Dr. Tom Payne, Chairperson
Dr. Mart Molle
Dr. Christian Shelton

Copyright by
Titus Delafayette Winters
2004

The Thesis of Titus Delafayette Winters is approved:

                                                                                    

                                                                                   

                                                                                    

Committee Chairperson

University of California, Riverside

2.25 Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge Dave Sheldon and Keri Nishimoto, the most important users of Agar: your input was invaluable. I would like to thank the undergrads who have contributed to the project: Eric Harris, Steve Bui, Ed Levie, and Vinh Lam. I would like to thank Dr. Geoff Kuenning, who gave me my first grading job. I would like to thank Dan Berger for his input on a draft of this document and continual wisdom regarding development. Most importantly, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Tom Payne, for his support on what once seemed like a small project.

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Analysis, Design, Development, and Deployment of a Generalized Framework for Computer-Aided Assessment

by

Titus Delafayette Winters

Master of Science, Graduate Program in Computer Science
University of California, Riverside, June 2004
Dr. Tom Payne, Chairperson
2.25

Over the past year the author has experimented with various approaches to Computer-Aided Assessment (CAA) ranging from custom shell-scripts for grading assignments to a complex GUI-based framework capable of handling Optical Mark Recognition and subjective grading of essay questions. The pros and cons of each approach are presented, focusing on barriers to adoption, level of tolerance to unexpected submission behavior, applicability in non-programming domains, and required user competency. An analysis of design requirements for a sufficiently general framework for CAA, based on the author's development experience, is presented, followed by a discussion of a system built to meet those requirements - called Agar - and improvements planned for Agar2.