An investigation into the automated assessment of the design-code interface

In this paper, we present an investigation into the development of a framework for the automatic grading (marking) of student submitted course work. We discuss this framework, its structure and its subsystems. Our framework has been developed in the context of the student submission consisting of two components: a design (using the UML methodology) and source code (using the Java programming language). The focus of our framework is upon the consistency between the student code and design. We discuss its context and development and highlight how we can infer structure from the student submission and use this to inform the assessment process. We describe the approach we are currently undertaking to instantiate this framework and apply it to work submitted for assessment by undergraduate computing students.