Engaging, Large-Scale Functional Programming Education in Physical and Virtual Space

Abstract

Worldwide, computer science departments have experienced a dramatic increase in the number of student enrolments. Moreover, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic requires institutions to radically replace the traditional way of on-site teaching, moving interaction from physical to virtual space. We report on our strategies and experience tackling these issues as part of a Haskell-based functional programming and verification course, accommodating over 2000 students in the course of two semesters. Among other things, we fostered engagement with weekly programming competitions and creative homework projects, workshops with industry partners, and collaborative pair-programming tutorials. To offer such an extensive programme to hundreds of students, we automated feedback for programming as well as inductive proof exercises. We explain and share our tools and exercises so that they can be reused by other educators.

Computer Aided Design and Grading for an Electronic Functional Programming Exam

“…They evaluate the changes in depth based on student surveys and exam results, but, except for the employed tools, no details on task design and automated grading were given. Kappelmann et al focus on how students can be engaged in online teaching in an introductory (Haskell-based) functional programming (FP) course, and also provide details on task designs and automated grading [12]. For checking programming tasks, they also use property testing, and add unit tests as well as a novel IO mocking library.…”

“…Apart from the sequences, entry points are specified to allow for reentering the correct proof, which allows for a fair distribution of points even when some mistakes were made. An alternative to such block-based automatic proof grading is using a theorem prover [12,10]. For instance, Kappelmann et al employed Check Your Proof (CYP) 1 in an FP exam [12].…”

“…An alternative to such block-based automatic proof grading is using a theorem prover [12,10]. For instance, Kappelmann et al employed Check Your Proof (CYP) 1 in an FP exam [12]. The input language of CYP is intentionally close to Haskell, and it supports checking equational reasoning, proofs by structural induction, proofs by extensionality, case analysis, and computation induction.…”

Teaching Simple Constructive Proofs with Haskell Programs

“…More recently, the challenges of effective feedback provision for formative assessment, the quest for rapid marking for summative assessment in very large classes, and a worldwide pandemic have spurred developments in reliable auto-marking [20]. This includes the marking of functional programming tasks [1,13].…”

“…Some authors extend this to topics in logic [7], and there is a body of work on the teaching of proof techniques firmly grounded in declarative programming (e.g., [12,19]). Moreover, functional programming is sometimes introduced following a "correct-by-construction" philosophy, that is, it is taught hand in hand with program verification [13]. One tool for this is CYP ("check your proof") [4,5], with support for auto-marking of proof exercises.…”