Researching and developing new software tools that greatly help to attract students to the learning process is always a challenge. The development of immersive learning and assessment tools in computer science education by using different assessment methods and proving that these tools can be extended further with new functionalities while the system is active also poses difficulties. Currently, we have implemented a software system for a double-blind peer review process in programming courses. Each student is assigned to assess one or more of their peers’ projects – a project in paper format and/or a project for blind review. The software is well accepted, but extensibility is difficult to achieve. As a step further in the development of the system we propose a methodology and tools for enhancing and evaluating the existing peer review software system. In this paper we define a software architecture for the software validation of the existing software. Next, we describe the software design, development and use. Finally, the results of using this software are discussed. One of the main goals of the presented software is to prove that the new features and changes are backward-compatible with the existing historical data. By designing and developing such tools we accelerate the development lifecycle and improve the quality and security of the educational software.

Keywords: Software, security, peer review, software engineering, software quality.