Automating Assessment of Exercises as Means to Decrease MOOC Teachers' Efforts

To increase digital fluency in adult population, efforts have included offering e-learning initiatives and MOOCs, and more efforts should be undertaken in order to facilitate MOOC implementation and to widen MOOC participation. Along this line, this paper presents the first findings toward the automated assessment of bash scripting exercises, to be offered in a MOOC focused on this topic. By using exercise solutions submitted by participants during a past edition of such a MOOC, we implemented bash scripts able to semi-automatically assess student submissions. Tests on three different exercises showed a decrease of 50%, w.r.t. actual manual assessment time, measured while the MOOC was delivered.