In this paper we present a web-based innovative education tool designed for automating the collection, evaluation and error detection in practical exercises assigned to computer programming and control engineering students. By using a student/instructor code-fusion architecture, the conceptual limits of multiple-choice tests are overcome by far. The proposed system is also able to individually parameterize the exercises for each student and allows an instructor to implement innovative self-learning techniques in which student can obtain a measure of their knowledge continuously along the whole course length. The proposed automatic evaluation system has been applied to several control engineering courses at the University of Seville and the results several case studies are presented here. (Contains 6 tables and 7 figures.)