Lightweight XML exercise checker application – XChecker

Overview

XML language teaching (part of the course) contains a theory part (3 lectures) covering the basic XML technologies (such as XML Schema, XSLT, XPath, Regexp) as well as the most important standard XML languages in automation area.

Teaching material includes a textbook (available as ebook), which is full of explained examples and the lecture slides available at MyCourses. However, the individually made XML exercises are the most important part of the student learning. The exercise instructions and necessary xml source files have been provided via course pages in MyCourses (3 rounds with 3-4 exercises each).

The short-term goal for this study year is to save teaching resources and to encourage students to use different freely available online editing tools. The idea is that students will learn the basic XML techniques by doing hands-on exercises using interactive online XML editing and testing tools. They can develop their solution step-by-step by iteratively editing and testing it. These online tools are normally specialized in one XML technology. When a student considers his solution is ready, he can submit it via MyCourses to be checked in the XML-checker application to be developed. The checking results will be provided as feedback to the students via MyCourses. Compared with the current situation teaching resources will be saved when no manual exercise checking and grading is needed. (In addition, the experience we can get from the usage of online XML editors and the flexibility of the XML checker tool could be valuable in the future development of the course teaching.)