The Web-CAT Cookbook shows how to use Web-CAT as an automated grading tool. It is intended to be a living, community-maintained document where people can come to learn (and teach others) how to set up and run programming assignments using Web-CAT. Common scenarios and problem solutions in using Web-CAT are documented in the form of short use case "recipes".

A secondary aim of the Cookbook is to further the adoption of Web-CAT. To that end we want to allow the possibility of a publishable book. The ContributorAgreement statement for this book is the most important consideration for publication. It is designed to allow free access to the content of the Cookbook while protecting the investmest a publisher may make in a compilation of material from the Cookbook. If you are going to contribute to the Cookbook you must agree to the ContributorAgreement statement.

Given the current lack of practical documentation on how to write "testable" programming assignments, and lack of documentation on pedagogical strategies for using automated graders for feedback and learning, we also aim for the Cookbook to cover these areas as well.

The Cookbook is a living, collaborative, community-maintained document and contributions are actively sought from all users of Web-CAT. See the Author Guide at the bottom of this page for instructions on how you can contribute. It's structure (and Author Guide) are based on the Schematics Cookbook, another wiki-based documentation project. This basic organization has been reused under the terms of the LGPL, which also governs community contributions to the Web-CAT Cookbook.

Look for the movies in the recipes below if you want a quick video tour of what Web-CAT is like, starting with the SubmissionWalkthrough (24Mb, 5min).

Basic Concepts

WhatIsWebCat
CoursesAndCourseOfferings
AssignmentsAndAssignmentOfferings
RoleBasedPermissions
WebCatFaq
- TryOutWebCat (with usage instructions)
- Sigcse2009Workshop: self-paced, on-line, quick-start training for new instructors (a detailed outline is available lower on this page)
WebCatFeatures (and WebCatChangeHistory)
Web-CAT Development Blog
MailingLists
OurPublications

Recipes for Students

LoginToWebCat
ChangeYourPassword
SubmitAnAssignment
- Movie: SubmissionWalkthrough (24Mb, 5min)
- SubmitUsingBluej $/!\$
- SubmitUsingEclipse $/!\$
InterpretYourFeedbackReport
- InterpretJavaTddFeedback $/!\$
- InterpretCppTddFeedback $/!\$
- ImproveYourTesting $/!\$
LookUpAssignmentResults
LookUpAnOldSubmission
ViewGraphsOfYourResults $/!\$
DownloadWhatYouSubmitted

Recipes for Graders

Recipes for Instructors

Self-paced On-line Training Materials

Sigcse2009Workshop: Automatically Grading Programming Assignments with Web-CAT
- The workshop wiki page contains electronic copies of the workshop materials in a form that you can try on your own, either on your own Web-CAT server, or with a guest account on the server at Virginia Tech. The workshop's hands-on materials include:
  - Preliminaries: Setting up your environment
    - Before you try the hands-on exercises, be sure you have Eclipse installed. Web-CAT does not require Eclipse, but the hands-on exercises here are written for that IDE to simplify the instructions. The preliminary setup instructions also explain how to install our submission plug-in for eclipse.
  - Exercise 1: Creating JUnit Test Cases with Eclipse
    - This exercise will give you a bit of practice writing simple test cases with JUnit, if you have not already used that testing framework. It also explains how to run those tests within Eclipse and interpret the results.
  - Exercise 2: Setting up your first assignment
    - The second exercise walks you through the following activities:
      - Creating your first course offering
      - Uploading your course roster as a CSV file
      - Creating your first assignment
      - Submitting a sample solution to try out your assignment
      More resources for various practice assignments are also available under the TryOutWebCat/UsageInstructions.
  - Exercise 3: Changing assignment grading options
    - The third exercise is all about customizing the behavior of grading plug-ins, using the JavaTddPlugin as an example. It walks you through the following activities:
      - Configuring an assignment without test cases
      - Modifying an assignment so students are not required to write tests
      - Changing code coverage requirements
      - Providing "hints" to students when instructor tests fail
      - Hand-grading key parts of students submissions
  - Exercise 4: Configuring coding style checks
    - The fourth exercise walks you through the following activities:
      - Adding instructor-provided data files to an assignment
      - Regrading student submissions when they need to be reprocessed
      - A brief overview of how static analysis works
      - How to provide custom PMD checks (including turning them off)
      - How to provide custom Checkstyle checks (including turning them off)