Automark++: A Case Tool to Automatically Mark Student Java Programs

Jubair Al-Ja'afer and Khair Eddin Sabri

King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, The University of Jordan, Jordan

Abstract: The quality assessment of a computer program is a critical process for ensuring its effectiveness. In this paper, an easy to apply tool, AUTOMARK++, is introduced to automatically evaluate the Java programs. The marking of a program under evaluation is based on its style. AUTOMARK++ is based on Redish and Smyth tool called AUTOMARK [12]. Two modifications were made to the AUTOMARK: First, new factors have been introduced to give the new tool flexibility in evaluating object-oriented languages such as Java. Second, the new tool automatically generates a model template for program evaluation instead of writing a specific model for each program under evaluation. AUTOMARK++ has been tested on simple and complex programs and the obtained results showed that the tool is considerably useful.

Keywords: Software engineering, style metric, software quality, Java programming language.

Received November 2, 2003; accepted January 22, 2004