LINSIM: A framework of An Automatic Assessment for Linux-based Operating System Exercises

Many automatic assessment (AA) tools have been developed and used to help the instructors grading the students. In computer science field, those AA tools are mainly focus on computer programming language course. However, with the development of the compiler and integrated development environment, the students can learn and practice programming while getting informative feedback without an AA tool. However, in the course that requires interaction with the operating system, the exercises can involve many programs and steps. Manually checking the student's machine takes a long time for the instructor. Furthermore, there is no AA tool that was designed specifically for grading this kind of exercise. In this paper, the framework for Linux-based operating system exercises called LINSIM is proposed. LINSIM obtains the state of the operating system in the student's machine and verifies if the system has been configured according to the exercise. The framework provides an abstraction between the LINSIM script and the Linux commands so that the instructor need not write custom commands. Finally, the prototype that implements the framework was developed and used in the classroom. As a result, the instructor can immediately provide the feedback on the exercise to the student.