This is our final week and we got to focus on wrapping up any remaining autograders. I had two course2 autograders remaining, one that was already in faculty code review and the other still in development. The autograder that was still in development was a lab about students simulating a store with for loops and the range function. There were many edge cases and I had to rely on a student function to figure out what items they are using their store. Once grabbing these items, I can then test their other functions with these items as input. While working on these autograders, I did spend some time writing the manuscript for our weekly meeting. The main feedback I got was to include an appendix section that featured all the questions that I would ask in my survey. I was able to complete the faculty code review for one of the course2 autograders and merged it into the main branch. I did finish the other autograder and it is in faculty code review! This was an amazing research experience and I got to learn a lot of things. I learned how to read reseach papers, how to write papers, and how to develop open-ended autograders! I am thankful for my mentors and my team!

This week I wrapped up faculty code review for another Course1 autograder. This one went through multiple rounds of code review as they presented new edge cases and potential student solutions to consider. This helped me improve the quality of the autograder. A new issue did arise this week and that was a bug in the course1 autograder template. It was one line that needed to be changed in order to properly read and execute the student’s program. So I had to implement this change in this autograder and the one from last week (that was already merged in the git branch). I was able to resolve the merge conflict and successfully merged these two autograders into the main branch! Our meeting this week was focused on going over our written out methods section for our manuscript. The feedback I recieved was to edit the questions in my survey to be more aligned with my research question. The task for next week is to write out a manuscript for our meeting and continue working on a course2 autograder.

This week was focused on completing the peer code review process with my teammates for my first Course2 autograder. I also completed the Professor code review for one of my previous autograders this week. I was able to squash and merge this autograder into the main branch in GitHub. I still had two other autograders this week that were in the Professor code review process and I was able to work on those. Their comments were mostly about formatting and some edge cases that I could consider. This did introduce some bugs in my code but I was able to reorganize the test functions in order to fix this issue. In this week’s meeting, we went over our research paper outlines. The overall feedback was that my current outline is in a good position but it would be benificial to shorten the survey questions used for my methods section. Also, I need to include more sources in my related work section and introduction section. The task for next week’s meeting is to formally write our methods section with the feedback we got this week. I was also assigned a new Course2 autograder and this one focuses on students using functions to simulate shopping at a store.

This week was focused on getting started with my first Course2 autograder. This autograder is for a lab designed around students developing four functions to help make string conversions. The string conversions were converting a word into pig latin and into a simplified text message. Since this is a Course2 autograder, I had to transition to a new coding template and it was a little confusing at first. I had a meeting with one of the Professors and she explained the main differences between Course1 and Course2 autograders and this helped clear my confusion. I was able to finish this autograder this week and moved it to Peer Code review for next week. In this week’s meeting, we went over my research questions and approaches to potentially answering them. It was decided that my research questions were a little broad and that I should make them more specific for next week. Our task for next week is to design an outline for a research paper that has an introduction, motivation, related work, research questions, and methods.

This week was mostly focused on wrapping up the autograder from last week. This autograder is focused on creating art output from input patterns by using indexing. I noticed that there was some edge cases and potential solutions that we have not yet discussed in meetings. We came to an agreement that students would be allowed to have some variability in how their program is terminated and we updated our test functions for this. This autograder completed peer code review and was sent for Professor code review. Also, our meeting this week was focused on going over my teammates research questions and any changes they should make. Due to time constraints, they said that we will go over my research questions next week. The Professors gave us the task of completing a research paper outline in preparation for next weeks meeting. We also read a paper this week on a Massive Open Online Computer Course (MOOC):

This week was focused on working on my next solo autograder. This autograder is for a lab that focuses on using while loops and indexing to create art from input patterns. This lab also focused on getting students used to the new line character as well as using conditional statements. There were some edge cases and considerations to alter the assignment instructions to make it clearer and to allow for more creativity. I was able to finish the test cases and moved it to peer review. Also, this week’s meeting focused on going over our research proposal from UR2PhD with our Professors. It was declared that our proposal was in good condition and that it’s time to start moving towards writing our own research paper. We were tasked with desining our own specific research questions for next week’s meeting as well as continuing our work on current autograders. One thing I noticed was that our code template struggled with capturing certain characters, so I brought this up and we worked to fix it.

This week was focused on starting a new group autograder while also wrapping up the UR2PhD research class. The new autograder was focused on debugging, where students were given the chance to take faulty code and alter it. Our autograder focused on detecting which changes students made and if their changed program presented any errors. We were able to finish this as a group and moved it to code review with the Professors. For the UR2PhD course, we finished our research proposal based on feedback given from a peer review process with our classmates. We also created and recorded an 8 minute presentation going over our efforts so far and our next steps. Also, I started to transition to a new solo autograder that is based on while loops again. The research proposal is linked here.

This week was more focused on working and completing my first individual autograder. This autograder was for a lab focused on students creating art output using a while loop. I noticed many things while working on this autograder. This included things like the different types of errors students could make, changes to lab instructions to be more open-ended, and how autograders are constantly changing. There were a large number of edge cases that were brought up in our meetings for this week. I was able to address all of these edge cases and moved the code for this autograder into peer review. I was able to complete peer review and move the code into faculty review. I have also read two papers this week more focused on different types of autograders.

This week was more focused on finishing our code for the first autograder. There were a lot of errors that stemmed from reading the output of test solutions incorrectly. However, we were able to finish writing all the test cases and were able to get the expected outputs. We did notice some issue with how our autograder would grab the output of the code but this was adressed with our mentor. We moved into the next step which is to perform code review with our Professors. They gave us comments regarding formatting and potential bugs that we had to address. It’s been going back and forth to make sure we grab all issues with our code. Also, I was able to get started on the next autograder, which is more of an individual task now. The online course this week has mostly focused on performing more literature review and finding good parts of scientific papers.

This week was focused on getting introduced to the team and the expectations of the project. I was also given information regarding the process of building an autograder. After I got settled in with the online research course, I moved towards understanding the autograders that were previously built. I read through the documentation that was provided by my mentor and learned the testing framework, pytest, that we would be working with. Soon, I set up my Coursera environment as I would coding my first autograder here with my two teammates. This autograder was focused on using user input with the random library to produce an output string. The first step was to create sample student solutions where some were correct, while most were incorrect. Throughout the week, I created test cases for each student solution to evaluate how the autograder would perform. While, I was working on this autograder, I was reading through previous papers on autograders and open-ended assignments to get an idea of what has attempted. Also, the online research course introduced me to how to properly read a research paper and how to work well in a team.