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

Bailey, Jacob

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

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

Owning Collections