Understanding how software works and writing a program are currently frequent requirements when hiring employees. The complexity of learning programming often results in educational failures, student frustration and lack of motivation, because different students prefer different learning paths. Although e-learning courses have led to many improvements in the methodology and the supporting technology for more effective programming learning, misunderstanding of programming principles is one of the main reasons for students leaving school early. Universities face a challenging task: how to harmonise students’ education, focusing on advanced knowledge in the development of software applications, with students’ education in cases where writing code is a new skill. The article proposes a conceptual framework focused on the comprehensive training of future programmers using microlearning and automatic evaluation of source codes to achieve immediate feedback for students. This framework is designed to involve students in the software development of virtual learning environment software that will provide their education, thus ensuring the sustainability of the environment in line with modern development trends. The paper’s final part is devoted to verifying the contribution of the presented elements through quantitative research on the introductory parts of the framework. It turned out that although the application of interactive features did not lead to significant measurable progress during the first semester of study, it significantly improved the results of students in subsequent courses focused on advanced programming.

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The presented project provides a virtual learning environment for university courses tea- ching app development using Android and Kotlin. It features both self-guided lessons and associated tests as well as practical app development tasks and associated self-assessed programming exercises. The well-known Moodle plug-in Virtual Programming Lab (VPL) serves as a starting point for the latter part. VPL gets extended by means for the usage of the Gradle build tool, the Android SDK tools and AndroidX tests for unit tests at the level of Android activities and fragments. In particular, the rather excessive resource requirements of the Gradle tool created numerous problems in the sand- boxes used by VPL. These issues were addressed by configuring suitable VPL settings. In addition, problems associated with the proper usage of these settings had to be addressed in VPL Altogether the proposed virtual learning environment provided a suitable means for learning in the described field as determined by questionnaires send to students.