Microservices for Score and State Saving of Aggregated Interactive Assignments

Cay Horstmann

2021-03-16

Navigation: Forward with space bar, → arrow key, or PgDn. Backwards with ← or PgUp.

Microservices for Score and State Saving of Aggregated Interactive Assignments

• Learning Objective: Be able to answer these reviewer questions
  • “I would like to see how easy to add any new JavaScript-based content as mentioned in the paper.”
  • “I am not convinced that the solution proposed is going to solve all the problems inherent in this space.”

Interactive Activities (AKA Smart Content)

• Student participates actively (not just watching or clicking “Next”)
• Interaction related to topic (not just multiple choice, fill in text)
• Implemented in JavaScript
• Examples:
  • Parsons puzzle
  • Autograded code exercise
  • Code tracer
  • Memory diagram
• Nice—how do I know that my students are doing them?

Interactive Assignments

• Assignment contains one or more activities
• Scores transmitted to instructor
• State saved/restored
  • Students can pause and resume work
  • Instructors can review work
• LTI is not the (complete) answer
  • Most LMS don't support an assignment with multiple LTI questions
  • LMS don't save/restore activity state
  • LTI, state saving orthogonal to skill set of activity implementors

CodeCheck Assignments

• Generic solution for interactive assignments
• Aggregates activities into assignment
• Sample assignment
• Optionally bridges to LTI
• Saves/restores state
• Activities use EPUB for Education protocol

  EPUB.Education.reportScores([scores])
  EPUB.Education.getScores([locations], callback)
  

• Free service, no login required

How Easy Is It To Add Activity Type?

• Simple Computer, Java applet (Barry Adams, Curt Hill), 988 LOC
• Conversion to JavaScript, adding autograding: 6 hours, 266 LOC
• Adding score and state calls: 15 min., 10 LOC (look for EPUB.Education)
• Result: Can include activity instances into assignment
• Sample assignment

What Can't It Do?

• Point of presentation: Microservices
• State saving/restoration does the simplest thing possible:
  • Save/restore JSON for student/assigment/location
• Aggregation does the simplest thing possible:
  • Present multiple activities in separate iframes as a single assignment
  • Optionally bridge to LTI
• Other services are plausible:
  • Anonymized usage logging
  • Provisioning of activity templates
• Optimized for lowering barriers to entry
  • Doesn't solve all problems in this space
  • Less “fully baked” than integrated systems (Runestone, OpenDSA, Your Own Favorite)
  • Does one thing well: Separates concerns between delivery system and activity author