The Design of ADAT: A Tool for Assessing Automata-Based Assignments

Abstract

This study describes the design of an automatic assessment system for assessing an automata-based assignment. Automata concept is taught in several undergraduate computing courses such as Theory of Computation, Automata and Formal Languages and Compilers. We take two elements into consideration when assessing the student's answers; static element and dynamic element. The static element involves the number of states (initial and final as well) and the number of transitions. Whilst the dynamic aspect involves executing the automata against several test data. In this work, we rely heavily on the JFLAP for drawing and executing the automata.