Unix Literacy for First-Year Computer Science Students

Kendon, Tyson; Stephenson, Ben

doi:10.1145/2910925.2910930

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Accordingly, we wanted practical activities to be at the core of the learning situation we would design. However, this approach tends to generate a considerable volume of student work to be examined and graded by instructors (e.g., [14]). Since we were constrained by the number of class hours (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ShellOnYou

Berry

Castelltort

Pélissier

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 1

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We present ShellOnYou, a new Computer Science education tool, and analyze its use with four successive student cohorts.Developed to help instructors manage numerous students, this web application offers auto-graded exercises to acquire practical knowledge of Unix-like operating systems from the command line. For each answer, and almost instantly, students receive a score and detailed feedback. This reactive and iterative process encourages students to resubmit answers and progressively expand their procedural knowledge. The tool can also deliver individualized statements, thereby allowing students to improve their skills by combining personal research and peer learning. As an online tool, ShellOnYou affords students access flexibility, and also easily fits in distance learning programs. We found it particularly useful when teaching students with heterogeneous Unix backgrounds. The tool is available on request.We placed four successive student cohorts in a learning situation involving this tool, and asked them to fill a survey at the end of the learning period. We combine qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze their answers to the survey. We attempt to characterize their acquisition of procedural knowledge and the building of group dynamics. Several dimensions emerge: the benefits of using the tool in a learning situation, the learning process iteration as a catalyst for renewed commitment, the tool's entertaining format and its scoring system as a motivation for regular studying, and the inherent customization of the learning pace.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ShellOnYou

Berry

Castelltort

Pélissier

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 1

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“…Despite growing up in a world with a lot of technology and being sometimes referred to as "digital natives" [7], they often struggle to adapt to the command line environment of an operating system which they are likely not familiar with. As Kendon and Stephenson note in [10], this may be because "it is so removed from their prior computing exprience".…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

TermAdventure: Interactively Teaching UNIX Command Line, Text Adventure Style

Šuppa

Jariabka

Matejov

et al. 2021

Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education v. 1

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Introductory UNIX courses are typically organized as lectures, accompanied by a set of exercises, whose solutions are submitted to and reviewed by the lecturers. While this arrangement has become standard practice, it often requires the use of an external tool or interface for submission and does not automatically check its correctness. That in turn leads to increased workload and makes it difficult to deal with potential plagiarism.In this work we present TermAdventure (TA), a suite of tools for creating interactive UNIX exercises. These resemble text adventure games, which immerse the user in a text environment and let them interact with it using textual commands. In our case the "adventure" takes place inside a UNIX system and the user interaction happens via the standard UNIX command line. The adventure is a set of exercises, which are presented and automatically evaluated by the system, all from within the command line environment. The suite is released under an open source license, has minimal dependencies and can be used either on a UNIX-style server or a desktop computer running any major OS platform through Docker.We also reflect on our experience of using the presented suite as the primary teaching tool for an introductory UNIX course for Data Scientists and discuss the implications of its deployment in similar courses. The suite is released under the terms of an open-source license at https://github.com/NaiveNeuron/TermAdventure. CCS CONCEPTS• Applied computing → Computer-assisted instruction.

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Implementing micro High Performance Computing (µHPC) artifact: Affordable HPC Facilities for Academia

Mwasaga

Joy

2020

2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)

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Unix Literacy for First-Year Computer Science Students

Cited by 5 publications

References 7 publications

ShellOnYou

ShellOnYou

TermAdventure: Interactively Teaching UNIX Command Line, Text Adventure Style

Implementing micro High Performance Computing (µHPC) artifact: Affordable HPC Facilities for Academia

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