Our research has resulted in the development of a tool to support electronic submission and assessment of coursework. The BOSS Online Submission System has been developed over a number of years as a tool to facilitate online submission and subsequent processing of programming assignments. The BOSS tool is capable of managing the whole process from coursework submission through to the return of final marks and feedback.

Students can submit their work using a web interface that transfers their work to a secure server. Once submitted the students' work can be automatically tested against defined criteria which can be reported back to the marker. BOSS allows for marked work to be moderated, feedback added and the results return to student via e-mail.

Our original motivation was for a tool, which would support computer programming modules, but it was also clear that an effective tool would—with minor adjustments—also be supportive of other types of material. The BOSS tool is now used at Warwick and several other institutions to manage the assessment of a variety of coursework including programming assignments, essays and reports.

Publications

Joy, M.S. and Griffiths, N. and Boyatt, R.C. (2005). "The BOSS Online Submission and Assessment System". ACM Journal on Educational Resources in Computing, 5(3). pp. 1-28. ISSN 15314278.

Requirements

At least Java 6 and Apache Tomcat version 5.

License

GPL v2.

Download

Available from Sourceforge - http://sourceforge.net/projects/cobalt/

Additional information

A separate web-site with additional information on BOSS, development history and applications is available at http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/boss/.