An Informative Test Code Approach in Code Writing Problem for Java Collections Framework in Java Programming Learning Assistant System

Abstract

To enhance Java programming educations, we have developed a Java Programming Learning Assistant System (JPLAS). In JPLAS, the code writing problem asks a student to implement a source code that passes the given test code on JUnit, where the details of the implementation are described in the test code. Previously, we confirmed the effectiveness of this informative test code approach in studying three object-oriented programming concepts for Java. In this paper, we present its application to studying Java Collections Framework (JCF). JCF enables us to handle a group of objects by offering appropriate libraries, which is expected to be mastered by the students. For evaluations, we generated five informative test codes for JCF, and asked 19 students from Japan, Myanmar, China, and Indonesia to implement the source codes. Then, all of them completed the source codes passing the test codes, while certain students did not use the expected JCF library functions.