CSC/ECE 517 Spring 2022 - E2212: Testing for hamer.rb
This page describes the changes made for the Spring 2022 OSS Project E2212: Testing for hamer.rb
Project Overview
Introduction
Using student's reviews of a certain assignment as a more accurate grade has become more popular among professors and courses in universities. Not only does this method free the professor and TAs from days of work, but also allows for students to learn more about an assignment through grading other's work. Unfortunately, many students may not take reviewing other's work seriously and may simply give 100 or 0 to other students. Since such reviews may skew a student's grade, a system to assert the correctness and credibility of a reviewer is necessary for student reviews to be accurate. The hamer algorithm was create for such purposes and returns a reputation weight associated with each reviewer. The instructor can then use the reputation weight value to either assert the reliability of a reviewer or use these values to compute a grade for a reviewr.
System Design
The hamer algorithm takes in a set of grades for assignments by reviewer and also any reputation weights (optional) associated with each reviewer to compute a reputation weight value for each reviewer. These reputation weight values indicate the accuracy and reliability of each reviewer. For example, a reviewer with a reputation weight of 3.0 is more accurate and reliable in their reviews compared to a 0.5 reputation weight of another reviewer. The following is an example from the paper [1] that describes the hamer algorithm:
This algorithm is currently deployed to the following web server: http://peerlogic.csc.ncsu.edu/reputation/calculations/reputation_algorithms. To use the algorithm, a post request is sent to the URL with
Description
hamer.rb was the file that implemented one of the “reputation systems” that can be used to determine the reliability of peer reviewers. However, this file is no longer current, having been replaced by a web service in 2015. Therefore, we will be trying to describe and test this web service in the following sections.
Mentor
Ed Gehringer, efg@ncsu.edu
Team Members
- Joshua Lin (jlin36@ncsu.edu)
- Muhammet Mustafa Olmez (molmez@ncsu.edu)
- Soumyadeep Chatterjee (schatte5@ncsu.edu)
Reputation System
Online peer-review systems are now in common use in higher education. They free the instructor and course staff from having to provide personally all the feedbackthat students receive on their work. However, if we want to assure that all students receive competent feedback, or even use peer-assigned grades, we need a way tojudge which peer reviewers are most credible. The solution is to use a reputation system. The reputation system is meant to provide objective value to student assigned peer review scores. Students select from a list of tasks to be performed and then preparetheir work and submit it to a peer-review system. The work is then reviewed by other students who offer comments/graded feedback to help the submitters improvetheir work. During the peer review period it is important to determine which reviews are more accurate and show higher quality. Reputation is one way to achieve thisgoal; it is a quantization measurement to judge which peer reviewers are more reliable. Peer reviewers can use expertiza to score an author. If Expertiza shows aconfidence ratings for grades based upon the reviewers reputation then authors can more easily determine the legitimacy of the peer assigned score. In addition, theteaching staff can examine the quality of each peer review based on reputation values and, potentially, crowd-source a significant portion of the grading function.Currently the reputation system is implemented in Expertiza through web-service. The service does not work all the time although expertiza employees can sometimes run the system, we could not reach the service and values even though we tried it on our own local computer and vcl as well. Nevertheless, we have implement some test scenerios based on the algorithms used in the web service.
Algorithms
Reputation systems may take various factors into account: • Does a reviewer assign scores that are similar to scores assigned by the instructor (on work that they both grade)? • Does a reviewer assign scores that match those assigned by other reviewers? • Does the reviewer assign different scores to different work? • How competent has the reviewer been on other work done for the class?
There are two algorithms used, the Hamer-peer algorithm has the lowest maximum absolute bias and the Lauw-peer algorithm has the lowest overall bias.This indicates, from theinstructor’s perspective, if there are further assignments of this kind, expert grading may not be necessary. It is observed in the article (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7344292) that the overall bias is a little bit higher, but the max. absolute bias is very high (more than 20). This indicates that for future similar courses, the instructor can trust most students’ peer grading, but should be aware that the students may give inflated grades. Therefore spot-checking is necessary. However, overall bias is quite low, as the students gave grades at least 16 points lower than expert grades. This may because either more training is needed, or the review rubric is inadequate. The results also suggest that for future courses of this kind, the instructor cannot trust the students' grades; expert grades are still necessary. The main difference between the Hamer-peer and the Lauw-peer algorithm is that the Lauw-peer algorithm keeps track of the reviewer's leniency (“bias”), which can be either positive or negative. A positive leniency indicates the reviewer tends to give higher scores than average. Additionally, the range for Hamer’s algorithm is (0,∞) while for Lauw’s algorithm it is [0,1].
Test Plan
Initial Phase
In the initial phase, we were tasked with testing the reputation_web_service_controller. The work done by a previous project team was impacted by the web-service (peerlogic) not being available at that time. This time, we were able to access the Peerlogic server at a late stage - therefore, our plan at this moment involved performing a series of unit tests to determine that the web-service was communicating correctly with Expertiza.
Initial Testing Outcomes
1. Since our focus in this phase was to conduct exploratory testing of the system, we wrote some conventional tests to examine Peerlogic functionality. At this stage, we realized that Peerlogic would only accept and respond with JSON data.
2. Therefore, a natural next step was to prepare a series of input data that simulated a general input scenario for the system, comprising of:
- a. Each reviewer has assigned scores to 3 reviewees (fellow students)
- b. There are a total of 3 reviewers, who have all graded each other in some fashion for 5 assignments
- c. Convert this scenario to JSON
- d. Write code to PUT this to Peerlogic, and receive a response
- e. Parse through this response to obtain the output values of the Hamer Algorithm, as calculated by Peerlogic.
- f. This output would be compared against actual data that we calculated based on the Research Paper for the Hamer Algorithm
The code for the last step is shown below
import math # Parameters: reviews list # reviews list - a list of each reviewer's grades for each assignment # Example: # reviews = [[5,4,4,3,2],[5,3,4,4,2],[4,3,4,3,2]] # Corresponding reviewer and grade for each assignment table # Essay Reviewer1 Reviewer2 Reviewer3 # Assignment1 5 5 4 # Assignment2 4 3 3 # Assignment3 4 4 4 # Assignment4 3 4 3 # Assignment5 2 2 2 # Reivewer's grades given to each assignment 2D array # Each index of reviews is a reviewer. Each index in reviews[i] is a review grade reviews = [[5,4,4,3,2],[5,3,4,4,2],[4,3,4,3,2]] # Number of reviewers numReviewers = len(reviews) # Number of assignments numAssig = len(reviews[0]) # Initial empty grades for each assignment array grades = [] # Initial empty delta R array deltaR = [] # Weight prime weightPrime = [] # Reviewer's reputation weight weight= [] # Calculating Average Weighted Grades per Reviewer for numAssigIndex in range(numAssig): assignmentGradeAverage = 0 for numReviewerIndex in range(numReviewers): assignmentGradeAverage += reviews[numReviewerIndex][numAssigIndex] grades.append(assignmentGradeAverage/numReviewers) print("Average Grades:") print(grades) # Calculating delta R for numReviewerIndex in range(numReviewers): reviewerDeltaR = 0 assignmentAverageGradeIndex = 0 for reviewGrade in reviews[numReviewerIndex]: reviewerDeltaR += ((reviewGrade - grades[assignmentAverageGradeIndex]) ** 2) assignmentAverageGradeIndex += 1 reviewerDeltaR /= numAssig deltaR.append(reviewerDeltaR) print("deltaR:") print(deltaR) # Calculating weight prime averageDeltaR = 0 for reviewerDeltaR in deltaR: averageDeltaR += reviewerDeltaR averageDeltaR /= numReviewers print("averageDeltaR:") print(averageDeltaR) # Calculating weight prime for reviewerDeltaR in deltaR: weightPrime.append(averageDeltaR/reviewerDeltaR) print("weightPrime:") print(weightPrime) # Calculating reputation weight for reviewerWeightPrime in weightPrime: if reviewerWeightPrime <= 2: weight.append(reviewerWeightPrime) else: weight.append(2 + math.log(reviewerWeightPrime - 1)) print("reputation per reviewer:") i = 1 for reviewerWeight in weight: print("Reputation of Reviewer ", i) print(round(reviewerWeight,1)) i += 1
Output
Reputation of Reviewer 1 1.0 Reputation of Reviewer 2 1.0 Reputation of Reviewer 3 1.0
Initial Conclusion
As you can see from the above output, the results that are actually received from Peerlogic did NOT match with expected results, which were calculated by hand
Changes to Project Scope
Second Phase
We followed the testing thought process recommended by Dr. Gehringer: In testing this service, we used an external program to send requests to a simulated service, and inspected the returned data. This decision was reached since our program of test was unfortunately not running, and could not be inspected in an ideal manner.
The test below sends real JSON to both peerlogic and mock. http://peerlogic.csc.ncsu.edu/reputation/calculations/reputation_algorithms
As we tested on the peerlogic and mock, current web-service is not correct, since the returned values do not match the expected values as can be seen in the picture.
This is what we are supposed to reach in this project.
Proof of working:
Test Code Snippet:
require "net/http" require "json" INPUTS = { "submission9999": { "stu9999": 10, "stu9998": 10, "stu9997": 9, "stu9996": 5 }, "submission9998": { "stu9999": 3, "stu9998": 2, "stu9997": 4, "stu9996": 5 }, "submission9997": { "stu9999": 7, "stu9998": 4, "stu9997": 5, "stu9996": 5 }, "submission9996": { "stu9999": 6, "stu9998": 4, "stu9997": 5, "stu9996": 5 } }.to_json EXPECTED = { "Hamer": { "9996": 0.6, "9997": 3.6, "9998": 1.1, "9999": 1.1 } }.to_json describe "Expertiza" do it "should return the correct Hamer calculation" do uri = URI('http://peerlogic.csc.ncsu.edu/reputation/calculations/reputation_algorithms') req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri) req.content_type = 'application/json' req.body = INPUTS response = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port) do |http| http.request(req) end expect(JSON.parse(response.body)["Hamer"]).to eq(JSON.parse(EXPECTED)["Hamer"]) end end describe "Expertiza Web Service" do it "should return the correct Hamer calculation" do uri = URI('https://4dfaead4-a747-4be4-8683-3b10d1d2e0c0.mock.pstmn.io/reputation_web_service/default') req = Net::HTTP::Post.new(uri) req.content_type = 'application/json' req.body = INPUTS response = Net::HTTP.start(uri.hostname, uri.port, :use_ssl => uri.scheme == 'https') do |http| http.request(req) end expect(JSON.parse("#{response.body}}")["Hamer"]).to eq(JSON.parse(EXPECTED)["Hamer"]) end end
In addition, this plan enables us to test the current functionality by treating this system as a black box, and is able to provide conclusions on
the accuracy of the implementation as a whole.
Therefore, in the section below, we have provided code that showcases this plan in action. The values returned by the algorithm are to be inspected both by code and by hand.
Simulation Code Segment to Test Web Service
import math # Parameters: reviews list # reviews list - a list of each reviewer's grades for each assignment # Example: # reviews = [[5,4,4,3,2],[5,3,4,4,2],[4,3,4,3,2]] # Corresponding reviewer and grade for each assignment table # Essay Reviewer1 Reviewer2 Reviewer3 # Assignment1 5 5 4 # Assignment2 4 3 3 # Assignment3 4 4 4 # Assignment4 3 4 3 # Assignment5 2 2 2 # Reivewer's grades given to each assignment 2D array # Each index of reviews is a reviewer. Each index in reviews[i] is a review grade reviews = [[5,4,4,3,2],[5,3,4,4,2],[4,3,4,3,2]] # Number of reviewers numReviewers = len(reviews) # Number of assignments numAssig = len(reviews[0]) # Initial empty grades for each assignment array grades = [] # Initial empty delta R array deltaR = [] # Weight prime weightPrime = [] # Reviewer's reputation weight weight= [] # Calculating Average Weighted Grades per Reviewer for numAssigIndex in range(numAssig): assignmentGradeAverage = 0 for numReviewerIndex in range(numReviewers): assignmentGradeAverage += reviews[numReviewerIndex][numAssigIndex] grades.append(assignmentGradeAverage/numReviewers) print("Average Grades:") print(grades) # Calculating delta R for numReviewerIndex in range(numReviewers): reviewerDeltaR = 0 assignmentAverageGradeIndex = 0 for reviewGrade in reviews[numReviewerIndex]: reviewerDeltaR += ((reviewGrade - grades[assignmentAverageGradeIndex]) ** 2) assignmentAverageGradeIndex += 1 reviewerDeltaR /= numAssig deltaR.append(reviewerDeltaR) print("deltaR:") print(deltaR) # Calculating weight prime averageDeltaR = 0 for reviewerDeltaR in deltaR: averageDeltaR += reviewerDeltaR averageDeltaR /= numReviewers print("averageDeltaR:") print(averageDeltaR) # Calculating weight prime for reviewerDeltaR in deltaR: weightPrime.append(averageDeltaR/reviewerDeltaR) print("weightPrime:") print(weightPrime) # Calculating reputation weight for reviewerWeightPrime in weightPrime: if reviewerWeightPrime <= 2: weight.append(reviewerWeightPrime) else: weight.append(2 + math.log(reviewerWeightPrime - 1)) print("reputation per reviewer:") i = 1 for reviewerWeight in weight: print("Reputation of Reviewer ", i) print(round(reviewerWeight,1)) i += 1
Output
Reputation of Reviewer 1 1.0 Reputation of Reviewer 2 1.0 Reputation of Reviewer 3 1.0
Scenarios
1) Reviewer gives all max scores
2) Reviewer gives all min scores
3) Reviewer completes no review
alternative scenario - reviewer gives max scores even if no inputs
Conclusion
We as a team figured out the algorithms and applications and write some test scenarious. However, we did not have chance to work on web service since it does not work due to module errors. What we had is undefined method strip on Reputation Web Service Controller. Although sometimes it works on expertiza team side, we were not able to see the web service working. We created some test scenarios and write a python code for simulate the algorithm.
In the code segment written to simulate the hamer.rb algorithm as described in "A Method of Automatic Grade Calibration in Peer Assessment" by John Hamer Kenneth T.K. Ma Hugh H.F. Kwong (https://crpit.scem.westernsydney.edu.au/confpapers/CRPITV42Hamer.pdf), we take a list of reviewers and their grades for each assignment reviewed to compute the associated reputation weight. Since the algorithm described in the paper does not specify an original weight for first time reviewers, we coded it so the first time reviewers had an original weight of 1. In addition, this code does not have reviewer weights added in for reviewers who already have reputation weights but will be added in soon. Also, we followed the algorithm they mentioned in the paper to the dot, but even then the output values they wrote as the example did not match what we computed by hand and by code. In this situation, either we missed something completely or the algorithm has been changed. As we tested on the peerlogic and mock, current web-service is not correct, since the returned values do not match the expected values as can be seen in the picture. This can be what we are supposed to reach in this project.
GitHub Links
Link to Expertiza repository: here
Link to the forked repository: here
Link to pull request: here
References
1. Expertiza on GitHub (https://github.com/expertiza/expertiza)
2. The live Expertiza website (http://expertiza.ncsu.edu/)
3. Pluggable reputation systems for peer review: A web-service approach (https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2015.7344292)