Interactive Technology and Smart Education

Purpose – To overcome the high manual effort of assessments for teaching personnel, e-assessment systems are used to assess students using information systems (IS). The purpose of this paper is to propose an extension of EASy, a system for e-assessment of exercises that require higher-order cognitive skills. The latest module allows assessing programming exercises in conjunction with particular test-driven-development and back-to-back testing.

Design/methodology/approach – EASy was developed following a design science research approach. To prove the effectiveness of the approach, the authors discuss findings from a survey that was conducted with almost 200 students from a programming lecture and present quantitative and qualitative findings.

Findings – Most students reflected positively on using EASy. EASy proves to be a versatile tool and the extension meets the authors' aims. Several details require further investigation, most notably usability and the support of tutors.

Research limitations/implications – E-assessment is a field that requires much future research to enable commercial-scale systems for assessment of higher-order cognitive skills. The authors' research is currently limited in the number of exercise types the system supports.

Practical implications – EASy is a research tool despite being used in actual lectures. It is not yet a general e-assessment solution.

Originality/value – While EASy is a research prototype, its usage in lectures demonstrates the practicability of using e-assessment. EASy currently is one of the few systems with advanced capabilities. The paper strongly contributes to the knowledge base on building e-assessment systems; thus, it is relevant both for practitioners seeking to establish e-assessment and to researchers trying to understand the future needs towards comparable systems.