cTram stands for "Coding Task Result Assessment Manager". The unsual letter capitalization used is two-fold. First, it is in tribute to my girlfriend who has provided inspiration and motivation throughout the project. Second, it is to emphasize that the "coding" part is not the central focus of the system. It is designed to be modular so that it can be easily expanded to evaluate tasks of other types as well.
In the future I intend to release at least one other version to emphasize this fact that can be used to evaluate something quite different from coding; possibly essays, CAD models, business model diagrams, or simple general-subject exams.
cTram is a system to manage coding assignments of one type or another. You can use the system for running programming competitions, evaluating classroom assignments, or anything else you can think of. If you familiarize yourself with the features I am sure you can come up with more ideas!
The idea for the system came from using Mooshak, an open-source programming contest manager written in TCL scripts. While the idea of Mooshak is awesome, and there are many nice features, I found the interface aggravating and a lot of the functionality restrictive. Also, the fact that it was written in TCL scripts and run through CGI-BIN made it difficult for me to improve on it.
Since I had used Mooshak to run a programming contest for the UConn ACM Chapter and one of my professors had also used it for a class, I decided to write a new system from scratch to handle this as my senior design project. My professor, Ion Mandoiu, is my mentor for this project and hopefully will be a full-time user of the system after it is completed.