Continuous feedback and automatic grading tool for Blackboard
Articles
November 12, 2020

Instant feedback on students’ code in Blackboard

The significant role of feedback in effectively improving a student's learning process, performance, and enthusiasm for learning is acknowledged by all teachers across the globe. For learning a skill such as computer programming, having a regular and short feedback loop becomes invaluable and often a key factor in the learning process for students. However, educators at universities face many challenges in providing feedback to their students on the submitted code. One major challenge is simply the lack of time to review and analyse individual submissions. In addition to this, various learning management systems (LMS) used at universities are, in general, not very suitable or efficient for providing quick feedback on code, which only further adds to the problem. 

Using CodeGrade, teachers finally have the power and flexibility to provide students with individualized code assessment within Blackboard (or Canvas, Brightspace, Moodle and Open edX). CodeGrade, compatible with all programming languages - including C, Java and Python amongst others - provides tools that help automate grading and give instant feedback to students based on fully customizable rubrics and easy-to-setup tests. Every time a student submits, they get instant feedback on their code. They can review this feedback, resolve errors accordingly, and upload their code again as many times as they want to get automatic feedback before the deadline. This process not only increases the feedback loop and the students’ engagement with code but also greatly enhances their learning experience and outcomes.

Give your students instant feedback on their code too!

The configuration process required for setting up CodeGrade in Blackboard, or any other LMS, is very easy and quick. Teachers can create their own customizable rubrics, a set of instructions or rules to grade student submissions. Different kinds of automatic tests, including compilation checks, input output tests, code quality checks or even unit tests such as JUnit, Pytest, can be set up using the rubrics created earlier. CodeGrade works with any programming language and is highly flexible to be used in any workflow. CodeGrade seamlessly integrates with Blackboard allowing students to receive their automatic feedback inside the LMS without having to leave Blackboard. Elke Boonen,  lecturer at the Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, states CodeGrade helped streamline their courses in Blackboard and provide an efficient automatic grading tool for her programming assignments. She even says implementing CodeGrade into their workflow helped achieve a greater success rate among students by increasing their practice! Similarly, CodeGrade has helped Dr. Oprescu, lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, in giving timely feedback and analysing the common mistakes and confusion points for her students using the powerful analytics tool, ensuring increased engagement and ability to action in students.

CodeGrade has helped improve not only the efficiency of Computer Science teachers worldwide, but also deliver impeccable results in terms of student performance! Bringing together the best of both Blackboard and CodeGrade into your ideal workflow! To learn more about CodeGrade and its features, check out our tour page, or our YouTube channel with videos explaining how to use CodeGrade. Please feel free to book a demo if you are interested in getting CodeGrade at your institution, or in case you have any further questions.

Devin Hillenius

Devin Hillenius

Co-founder

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