CodeMaster - Automatic Assessment and Grading of App Inventor and Snap! Programs

Abstract

The development of computational thinking is a major topic in K-12 education. Many of these experiences focus on teaching programming using block-based languages. As part of these activities, it is important for students to receive feedback on their assignments. Yet, in practice it may be difficult to provide personalized, objective and consistent feedback. In this context, automatic assessment and grading has become important. While there exist diverse graders for text-based languages, support for block-based programming languages is still scarce. This article presents CodeMaster, a free web application that in a problem-based learning context allows to automatically assess and grade projects programmed with App Inventor and Snap!. It uses a rubric measuring computational thinking based on a static code analysis. Students can use the tool to get feedback to encourage them to improve their programming competencies. It can also be used by teachers for assessing whole classes easing their workload.

Comparing the Effectiveness of Scratch and App Inventor with Regard to Learning Computational Thinking Concepts

“…With three of the computational thinking concepts (Parallelism, Synchronization and Flow Control), Scratch projects outperform App Inventor projects, especially with regard to Parallelism, where the average score for Scratch is much higher than that for App Inventor. This result is in good agreement with work by Wangenheim et al [26], who noted that it is difficult to implement parallelism in App Inventor. On the other hand, this result also shows that Scratch is highly appropriate for learning parallelism.…”

“…Sherman et al [25] presented a rubric for App Inventor called the "App Inventor Project Rubric". This rubric can assess students' "mobile computational thinking" skills, and it has the following 14 assessment categories: (1) Screen Interface, 2 Wangenheim et al [26] presented rubrics for "Snap!" [27] and App Inventor based on earlier work ( [18,25] respectively).…”

Pensamento Computacional e a Ação Computacional por Ensino Remoto: Um relato de experiência de uso do AppInventor em meio a pandemia de COVID-19

“…Pode-se ainda afirmar que os códigos desenvolvidos pelos estudantes possuem características que remetem ao aprendizado do PC. Essa afirmação decorre do fato de o Code Master medir a complexidade dos programas com base nas várias dimensões do PC, como abstração, sincronização, paralelismo, noções algorítmicas de controle de fluxo, interatividade do usuário e representação de dados [Von Wangenheim et al 2018]. A avaliação completa obtida pelos estudantes pode ser encontrada em https://bit.ly/30iIvkW.…”

CT Puzzle Test: Em direção a uma avaliação interativa do pensamento computacional

“…Ainda é possível investigar o desenvolvimento do PC em indivíduos em contextos clínicos, como por exemplo os relacionados a públicos com necessidades especiais. Wangenheim et al (2018) aponta que a avaliação do PC em estudantes, na maioria dos casos, se dá por meio de tarefas de programação que avaliam assertividade e eficiência de código. Outras iniciativas utilizam instrumentos na forma de questionários de múltipla escolha com uma única resposta correta previamente definida, como o Commutative Assessment Test (WEINTROP; WILENSKY, 2015), o Test for Measuring Basic Programming Abilities (MÜHLING et al, 2015) e o Bebras Tasks FUTSCHEK, 2008).…”