Secure Answer Book and Automatic Grading

In response to the growing need to perform assessments online, we have developed a secure answer book, as well as a tool for automatically grading it for our course on spreadsheet modeling. We applied these techniques to a cohort of about 160 students who took the course last term. In this paper, we describe the design, implementation and the techniques employed to enhance both the security of the answer book and the ease, accuracy and consistency of grading. In addition, we summarize the experience and takeaways, both from the instructor and the student perspectives. Although the answer book and grading tool described may be specific to the course for which they were developed, many of their design principles may be extended to other courses and electronically submitted assignments.