An interactive program advising system

Gillett, Will D.

doi:10.1145/952989.803495

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Interactive software tools have been developed for different purposes : t o teach programming and documentation techniques [24,25] ; to assist students t o detect and analyze errors [12,15,26] ; to teach about top-down programmin g [12] ; to aid the development of flowcharts [171 ; and to provide a full learnin g laboratory [11] .…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Gillett proposed an Interactive Program Advising Syste m (IPAS) to help eliminate "conceptual errors" from students' programs and t o increase the beginner's understanding of language constructs [26] .…”

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the other errors (e .g ., error-pron e constructions, redundant code) can also be detected by Gillett's student syste m [26] . Concerning FACES' ability to generate documentation, it is wort h considering the potential usefulness of a similar tool in an educationa l environment, in particular its usefulness for beginning students .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Teaching and learning computer programming

Ulloa

1980

SIGCSE Bull.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstrac tTo improve introductory computer science courses and to update the teaching o f computer programming, new teaching methods emphasizing structured programmin g and top-down design have been presented and a variety of automate d instructional tools have been developed . The purpose of this paper is :(1) t o survey a number of methods and tools used in the teaching of programming ; (2 ) to present, with the aid of this survey, a number of areas where beginnin g programmers experience difficulties ; (3) to present ways of improving some o f the tools ; and (4) to propose other possible aids . This paper is organized as follows . Section 1 introduces the topic and purpos e of the paper . Section 2 reviews several teaching methods discussed in th e literature . Section 3 surveys various student-oriented interactive an d noninteractive tools . Section 4 discusses nonstudent-oriented aids an d presents alternatives by discussing how to adapt similar aids to a studen t environment . Section 5 provides a summary of the paper and a conclusion . Pertinent problem areas and students' viewpoints are presented in each section . Introductio nThe development of a good computer program is a difficult task . Progra m development, like any creative process, requires skill and experience i n various activities such as problem solvidg, debugging, and testing . No t surprisingly, student programmers encounter numerous problems, "man y instructors express an uneasy feeling that the objectives of the introductor y programming course are often not met," and "many students fail to develo p programming competency" [1] .In an attempt to improve the effectiveness of introductory computer scienc e courses and to update the teaching of computer programming, new methods fo r teaching the subject have been considered [2, 3, 4, 5, 6] along with increase d emphasis on structured programming and top-down design [7, 8, 9, 10] . Also , better automated teaching tools have been developed [6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] . This paper aims to review some of these studies and others and, through thi s review, to better understand some of the problems that face beginning student s in creating, testing, debugging, and documenting programs . 2.Teaching Computer Programmin g One of the major problems in teaching programming is trying to implant goo d programming habits . "No matter how careful one is to introduce clea n programming habits (restricted control flow, top-down design, meaningful dat a names, completeness in specifications and documentation, etc .) at the ver y beginning of students' programming experience students too easily fall int o 'quick and dirty' programming" [2] . To combat this problem, Cherniak [2] , Russman [16], and Koffman and Friedman [17] have each proposed differen t approaches .Cherniak proposes that students should start as users of computer system s rather than as programmers . Students should he provided with proved program s (i .e ., canned programs) and with documentation on how to use them . Beginnin g students should ...

show abstract

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 1mentioning

confidence: 99%