Nifty reflections

Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Richards

et al. 2015

Web-based programming exercises are a useful way for students to practice and master essential concepts and techniques presented in introductory programming courses. Although these systems are used fairly widely, we have a limited understanding of how students use these systems, and what can be learned from the data collected by these systems.In this paper, we perform a preliminary exploratory analysis of data collected by the CloudCoder programming exercise system from five introductory courses taught in two programming languages across three colleges and universities. We explore a number of interesting correlations in the data that confirm existing hypotheses. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we demonstrate the effectiveness and future potential of systems like CloudCoder to help us study novice programmers.

“…Previous work has also examined novice behavior when solving short programming exercises, similar to those found in CodingBat [16] and CloudCoder. An example is the work of Denny et.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. as CodingBat [16] and CloudCoder [10], can be a useful way for instructors to provide students with additional opportunities to practice basic concepts and techniques with the ultimate goal being (hopefully) to help students achieve better outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Student Work Patterns Using Programming Exercise Data

Spacco

Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

Richards

et al. 2015

“…An excellent web-based drill and practice framework is Parlante's CodingBat tool (previously named JavaBat) [9]. Students using CodingBat are presented with a description of a problem along with a corresponding method header.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the syntax barrier for novices

Proceedings of the 16th Annual Joint Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Luxton-Reilly

Tempero

et al. 2011

106

Mastering syntax is one of the earliest challenges facing the novice programmer. Problem solving and algorithms are the focus of many first year programming classes, leaving students to learn syntax on their own while they practice writing code. In this paper we investigate the frequency with which students encounter syntax errors during a drill and practice activity. We find that students struggle with syntax to a greater extent than we anticipated, even when writing short fragments of code.

“…Recent educational research in various disciplines has shown that student generated questions are of acceptably high quality for such purposes [1,15]. Specifically in computer science education, various tools have been developed which provide students with banks of instructor-created exercises with which to practice [14,13]. In light of the benefits associated with generating questions, we encourage designers of such tools to consider approaches that would allow students to develop their own exercises and contribute them to these platforms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generating Practice Questions as a Preparation Strategy for Introductory Programming Exams

Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education

2015

Written exams are a common form of assessment in introductory programming courses. Creating exam questions is normally the responsibility of the course instructor, however the process of authoring such questions may be a useful learning activity in itself. We explored this idea with a randomized controlled experiment (n > 700) in which a group of first-year programming students generated practice questions prior to an exam. Even though all questions were available to every student in the course for practice, the group that generated the questions performed significantly better on the exam. The effects were most pronounced when students answered exam questions on topics that were targeted by questions they had generated. We suggest that some existing tools for computer science education may benefit from incorporating related activities.