We are developing a programming education support tool pgtracer utilizing fill-in-the-blank questions. Pgtracer operates on Moodle, and provides questions to the student that some parts are masked in a pair of program and trace table. A question consists of four XML files representing a program, a trace table and two types of masks for program and trace table. We propose teacher's function of pgtracer in this paper: question editing and data analysis functions. The question editing function includes automatic generation function of XML files representing program and trace table from a given C++ source program and input data. Pgtracer collects student's log and provides data analysis function from the various viewpoints of student and question.
We are developing a programming education support tool pgtracer as a plug-in of well-known Web-based Learning Management System Moodle. Pgtracer provides fill-in-the-blank questions composed of a C++ program and a trace table to students. When a student answers a question by filling the blanks, pgtracer automatically collects student's answers, required time, evaluation result, etc. as student log. In this paper, we propose and evaluate seven analysis functions of the student log. The student log analysis functions are classified into the analysis functions of a student, those of a question, and those of an answering process. A teacher can analyze achievement level of the students and difficulty level of the problems utilizing the analysis functions. Some of the functions are also provided to the students as student feedback functions. We perform a preliminary evaluation of the analysis functions against two teachers teaching computer programming to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed functions. We also perform an evaluation experiment at an actual class and demonstrate usability of the student feedback functions. The two teachers and more than 80% of the students positively appreciate the proposed functions through our survey evaluation.
This paper presents overview and student functions of a programming education support tool pgtracer utilizing fill-inthe-blank questions. Pgtracer runs under Moodle and provides fill-in-the-blank questions composed of a C++ program and a trace table to the students. The tool can provide questions having various difficulty levels from the same program. This can be realized by changing the position of the blanks of the program and trace table. When a student fills the blanks, the tool automatically evaluates the answer. The tool automatically collects answers, time and evaluation result as student log. A teacher can analyze understanding level of the students by analyzing the log.
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