“I find that CodeGrade increases my efficiency greatly. To have a streamlined platform like this, it’s quite fantastic.”

Steve is the lecturer for a fully online Java programming course at Lake Tahoe Community College in California, typically for 20 to 40 students per term. Steve uses CodeGrade, integrated with Canvas, for all of his assignments.‍

CodeGrade workflow

“I teach with Java, which isn’t really germane to the fact that I use CodeGrade, but CodeGrade supports Java. Besides Java, I teach students the Eclipse IDE. My students submit zipped Eclipse projects to CodeGrade. It’s very nice for me that CodeGrade can then organize these projects automatically and unzip them. Besides that, I can apply filters to students’ submissions to ensure that they are correctly formatted, compilable and runnable Eclipse projects.”

“Once I obtain these projects, my grading can proceed rapidly. I often grade offline with respect to the CodeGrade web interface by using the CodeGrade Filesystem application. With the Filesystem, I just open all the projects in Eclipse and they appear in my project explorer. Then I just cruise down the list, run them, read them, and as comments occur to me I return to the CodeGrade assignment in Canvas and enter all my comments there and assign the grade.”‍‍

Increasing efficiency

“I find that CodeGrade increases my efficiency greatly. To have a streamlined platform like this, it’s quite fantastic. I also think my students like it, they enjoy the detailed feedback. And, as I strive to be very rapid in my turnaround with the 30-35 students I have, I can generally grade all submissions within a day or so. I think that’s a really good way of teaching, to provide feedback while the students still have fresh in their mind what it is they’re trying to accomplish.”‍

Better Canvas workflow

“I think that the workflow with CodeGrade and Canvas is good. Honestly, Canvas is quite annoying to set up, I call it a “drilldown festival”. I have sore wrists from drilling my mouse down trying to get anything accomplished. But once I’m into CodeGrade and using Eclipse, that’s over. I’m able to apply whatever automation I want to. If you have repetitive comments, which you often have, for instance, you can use the CodeGrade snippets. Students often make the same types of mistakes or miss the same point of an assignment. By using snippets you can streamline your workflow and students can’t even tell you’ve used those snippets.”

“CodeGrade is definitely a streamlining system. The claim of the system is that an instructor’s effectiveness can be increased and the quality of their assessment can increase if the drudgery and workload of doing so is decreased. I find that to be the case for sure. It’s just much more effective.”