Improving student performance by evaluating how well students test their own programs

Edwards, Stephen H.

doi:10.1145/1029994.1029995

Cited by 132 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…A majority of the systems are dedicated to algorithm and program visualization or simulation (e.g., [81,88,79,3]), while the remaining SLCs are related to programming, problem solving and automatic assessment (e.g., [24,23,22,53,92]). …”

Section: Dimensions Of Slcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science Education

Brusilovsky

Edwards

Kumar

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the Working Group Reports of the 2014 on Innovation &Amp; Technology in Computer Science Education Conference

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Section: Dimensions Of Slcsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Web-CAT (http://web-cat.org/) is a web-based automated grading system for programming assignments [24,23,22]. It uses a plug-in-based architecture to provide for customizability and extensibility.…”

Section: A21 Web-catmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science Education

Brusilovsky

Edwards

Kumar

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the Working Group Reports of the 2014 on Innovation &Amp; Technology in Computer Science Education Conference

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“…Parlante's CodingBat 14 does adopt a somewhat test-driven approach, although students do not write tests and the system is limited to a set of small, focused exercises. Edwards' Web-CAT [12] web-based automated grading tool assumes student creation of automated (presumably test-driven) unit tests, but it provides no support for interactive labs. More general web-based development environments have begun to emerge.…”

Section: Interactive Web-based Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting Introductory Test-Driven Labs with WebIDE

Dvornik

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Supporting Introductory Test-Driven Labs with WebIDE Thomas DvornikWebIDE is a new web-based development environment for entry-level programmers with two primary goals: minimize tool barriers to writing computer programs and introduce software engineering best practices early in a student's educational career. Currently, WebIDE focuses on Test-Driven Learning (TDL) by using small iterative examples and introducing lock-step labs, which prevent the student from moving forward until they finish the current step. An initial set of labs and evaluators were created as examples of how to use WebIDE and were used in a pilot study in a CS0 course where students were split into two groups, one that used WebIDE and one that didn't. The WebIDE group showed a significant improvement in performance when writing a simple Android application.Additionally, among students with some programming experience, the WebIDE group was more proficient in writing unit tests.iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank Olga Dekhtyar for her help in planning and assessing the pilot study, and Halli Meth for developing early labs and giving initial feedback to the functionality of WebIDE.

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“…The Web-based Center for Automated Grading (WebCAT) system, created at Virginia Tech in 2003, addresses this concern in a unique way (Edwards 2003 Finally, assessment tools may be extended to cover more abstract assignments. The aforementioned CourseMaker tool supports the submission of flowcharts.…”

Section: General Assessment Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automation in CS1 with the Factoring Problem Generator

Parker¹

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AUTOMATION IN CS1 WITH THE FACTORING PROBLEM GENERATOR Joshua B. ParkerAs the field of computer science continues to grow, the number of students enrolled in related programs will grow as well. Though one-on-one tutoring is one of the more effective means of teaching, computer science instructors will have less and less time to devote to individual students. To address this growing concern, many tools that automate parts of an instructor's job have been proposed. These tools can assist instructors in presenting concepts and grading student work, and they can help students learn to program more effectively. A growing group of intelligent tutoring systems attempts to tie all of this functionality into a single tool that is meant to be used throughout an entire CS course or series of courses.To contribute to this emerging area, the Factoring Problem Generator (FPG) is presented in this work. The FPG creates and grades problems in C in which students search for and extract blocks of repeated code into individual functions, learning to utilize parameters and return values as they do so. The problems created by the FPG are highly configurable by instructors such that the difficulty can be finely tuned to suit students' individual needs. Instructors can choose whether or not to include arrays, pointers, certain elemental data types, certain operators, or certain kinds of statements, among other things. The FPG is additionally capable of generating a set of test cases for each generated problem. These test cases fully exercise students' solutions by covering all branches of execution, and they ensure that program functionality does not change as students factor code into functions.Initial experimentation with the system has suggested that the FPG can be integrated into a beginning CS curriculum and with further refinement could become a standard tool in the CS classroom.

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Improving student performance by evaluating how well students test their own programs

Cited by 132 publications

References 19 publications

Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science Education

Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science Education

Supporting Introductory Test-Driven Labs with WebIDE

Automation in CS1 with the Factoring Problem Generator

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