Open Sourcefull stack

Simple Assessment

Online examination platform with auto-grading, participant management, and real-time exam delivery.

About the Project

Simple Assessment is an open-source examination platform for creating timed assessments, managing participants, and auto-grading submissions without enterprise LMS overhead.

Problem

Educators and small teams need online exams with grading automation but cannot justify complex LMS platforms or manual marking at scale.

Features I Handled

Described using the STAR method — Situation, Task, Action, Result.

Feature 1

Auto-Grading Engine

Situation

Manual grading did not scale once assessments included mixed question types and larger cohorts.

Task

Support multiple choice, short answer, and structured formats with consistent server-side scoring.

Action

Built a grading module in the Express API that evaluates submissions against answer keys and returns scored results atomically.

Result

Instant feedback for participants and eliminated manual marking for standard question types.

Feature 2

Timed Exam Delivery

Situation

Exams needed hard time limits and a controlled participant experience in the browser.

Task

Deliver exams with countdown timers, session persistence, and submission locking at expiry.

Action

Implemented timed sessions in the React SPA with server-authoritative start/end timestamps stored in MongoDB.

Result

Reliable exam delivery with consistent timing even if clients refresh mid-session.

Feature 3

Participant & Question Bank Management

Situation

Organizers reused questions across exams and tracked who sat each assessment.

Task

Provide CRUD for question banks, exam assembly, and participant enrollment.

Action

Shipped admin flows for bank management, exam publishing, and participant dashboards with JWT-protected routes.

Result

End-to-end exam lifecycle from authoring to graded results in a single open-source product.

Architecture & Technical Decisions

Simple Assessment is a classic monolithic Express API paired with a React SPA — intentionally simple, not microservices or serverless backend.

Microservices?

No — single API codebase

Serverless?

Frontend on Netlify; API is Node monolith

Real-time

Polling + server timestamps (not WebSockets)

Open source

Yes — full-stack reference implementation

Architecture pattern: Monolith (Express API + React SPA)
Hosting & deployment: Netlify for frontend static hosting; Node API on PaaS/server
Data layer: MongoDB for exams, questions, participants, and submissions
Integrations & services: JWT authentication; server-side grading engine