TRACE: AI-Assisted Assessment of Collaborative Projects in Computer Science Education

Collaborative group projects are integral to computer science education, fostering teamwork, problem-solving, and industry-relevant skills. However, assessing individual contributions within group settings remains challenging. Traditional approaches, including equal grade distribution and subjective peer evaluations, often lack fairness, objectivity, and scalability, particularly in large classrooms. We propose TRACE, a semi-automated AI-assisted framework for assessing collaborative software projects that evaluates both project quality and individual contributions using repository mining, communication analytics, and AI-assisted analytics. A pilot deployment in a software engineering course demonstrated high alignment with instructor assessments, increased student satisfaction, and reduced instructor grading effort. The results suggest that AI-assisted analytics can improve the transparency and scalability of collaborative project assessment in computer science education.