vivisthebest/plato

Grading toolkit in Python, for computer science courses

plato

plato is a Python program that was written to make the grading process more efficient by automating the repetitive tasks ordinarily done by human graders. 'plato' is a branch-off of socrates, a grading program written by Alex Breen.

To this end, the program provides tools to run pre-programmed tests defined by an instructor or the teaching staff in a criteria file. The criteria file is a plain text file that describes the required parts of a submission, and any number of tests designed by the instructor or teaching staff. Reading this file, plato will determine which parts of a submission are present, and run the tests for the parts of a submission that are present. Missing parts of a submission or failed tests constitute the deductions for a particular submission. When plato has run all the tests it can, it writes a grade file to the student's submission directory.

Obviously, there are some cases in which a test for plato cannot be designed. For example, examining a solution for proper code style or appropriate documentation must be done by a human grader. For this task, the review test was created. When plato finds a review test, it pauses the grading to allow the human grader to review a part of the submission and take deductions, if necessary.

The ultimate goal is to automate as many tests as possible. However, plato is a relatively new tool, and currently only has support for a few kinds of assignments.

For much more information, see our wiki on GitHub.