An effective learning activity in a computer programming course is to study and practice computer programs. In order to help students to submit exercises and to assist instructors to mark programming exercises, a number of program submissions and assessment systems have been developed. However, these systems do not provide sufficient support for instructors to design exercises that can help students to study and practice computer programs in an incremental manner. With the primary aim to improve the teaching and learning of computer programming, we have developed a programming exercise management system, namely Programming Learning Web (PLWeb), to assist instructors to design computer programming exercises and to help students to study and practice programming exercises. PLWeb provides an integrated development environment (IDE) which is used not only as an authoring tool for instructors to compose exercises but also as a novice-friendly editor for students to study programs and to submit solutions. In addition, PLWeb allows instructors to use visualized learning status to assist students with difficulties. A plagiarism detection tool is also provided to deter students from plagiarism

This study investigated how a schematic‐based visualisation approach implemented in an electronic learning environment facilitated the learning of the complex programming concept. The semantic‐based visualisation approach applied Visualcode Rules and utilised various pictorial notations modeling the execution of recursive procedures. In this study, 38 college students studied the Scheme language and its recursive procedures in three different conditions. The three conditions were (a) the VisualScheme environment in which schematic‐based pictorial notations (e.g. coloured icons and environment trees) were employed to help learners trace intermediate steps of executing procedures; (b) an Internet learning environment in which an ordered sequence of static pictorial notations provide a snap shot and illuminate execution of recursive procedures; (c) an Internet learning environment in which on‐line source codes were annotated with detailed textual information. Results of the study indicated schematic‐based pictorial notations helped students to form a better conceptual framework for learning the concept of recursion. It is suggested that the design of an electronic learning environment may appropriately apply meaningful pictorial information to help students learn complex programming concepts.

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This paper presents a module system and a programming environment designed to support interactive program development in Scheme. The module system extends lexical scoping while maintainig its flavor and benefits and supports mutually recursive modules. The programming environment supports dynamic linking, separate compilation, production code compilation, and a window-based user interface with multiple read-eval-print contexts.