Automatic management of laboratory work in mass computer engineering courses

Teaching computer engineering calls for an important practical component, usually covered by setting several laboratory exercises for each course. These exercises are specified as assignments by the teachers and have to be completed by the students. At the Computer Science School of the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain, some of these laboratory exercises have to be set for up to 400 students. High-quality laboratory work requires the use of technology to help in student management, interaction, and assessment. Over the last ten years, this department at UPM has been a site for new tool development. Students use these tools to submit their laboratory work over the network. These tools allow the students´ work to be checked by a battery of tests proposed by the instructor. In addition, a specific tool has been built to detect plagiarism by students. This work describes the services provided by this environment and the experience gathered during the use of this laboratory.