AUTOMATIC ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE FOR A LARGE NUMBER OF STUDENTS

At the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna the number of newly enrolled students increased from less than 700 to more than 3000 within the last 15 years, but the scientific staff of the statistical institute remained unchanged and consists of 4 people. So, depending on the branch of study, 200 to 500 students have to be supervised. Several years ago an online program was developed which allows ongoing control of knowledge. In the meantime, this program has been further developed and is used not only in the basic statistical courses, but also in advanced lectures. In a modification it is also used in the lecture "Introduction to programming". Here Java programs have to be developed by students. These programs are uploaded to the university's Elearn platform and checked for runnability and correctness of code using a tool developed in-house. The uploaded programs are then automatically evaluated. A big advantage of this type of teaching is that solutions to tasks can be uploaded several times. Students are informed about errors and can correct them within a certain period of time. The planned talk will reflect the experiences with this kind of teaching.