Defining programming problems as learning objects

Abstract

Standards for learning objects focus primarily on content presentation. They were already extended to support automatic evaluation but it is limited to exercises with a predefined set of answers. The existing standards lack the metadata required by specialized evaluators to handle types of exercises with an indefinite set of solutions. To address this issue existing learning object standards were extended to the particular requirements of a specialized domain. A definition of programming problems as learning objects, compatible both with Learning Management Systems and with systems performing automatic evaluation of programs, is presented in this paper. The proposed definition includes metadata that cannot be conveniently represented using existing standards, such as: the type of automatic evaluation; the requirements of the evaluation engine; and the roles of different assets - tests cases, program solutions, etc. The EduJudge project and its main services are also presented as a case study on the use of the proposed definition of programming problems as learning objects.