University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

uAssign: Scalable and flexible interactive activities for teaching the UNIX terminal

Bailey, Jacob

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/101068

Description

Title
uAssign: Scalable and flexible interactive activities for teaching the UNIX terminal
Author(s)
Bailey, Jacob
Issue Date
2018-04-25
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Zilles, Craig
Department of Study
Computer Science
Discipline
Computer Science
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
  • unix
  • terminal
  • docker
  • containers
  • teaching
  • websockets
  • browser
  • prairielearn
Abstract
In this thesis, I describe uAssign, an assignment system for teaching and assessing command line terminal skills. It allows an instructor to create terminal assignments where students complete a sequence of operations to achieve a goal correctly that can be automatically graded. Assignments can be randomized, and are created to an instructor's specification. uAssign provides a friendly user interface to a Docker container via an in-browser terminal emulator powered by WebSockets. Performance testing and its use in an ongoing course show that it is efficient enough to handle a large number of concurrent users. A survey of students shows significant improvement in terminal skill confidence after using uAssign and provides interesting insight into the preferences and opinions of freshman-level students on the subject of their development workflows and terminal experience.
Graduation Semester
2018-05
Type of Resource
text
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101068
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2018 Jacob Bailey

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Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations and Theses - Computer Science
Dissertations and Theses from the Dept. of Computer Science