Educational crowdsourcing to support the learning of computer programming

Technology has been used in the last three decades to support teaching and learning. However, educational software has frequently been under investigation to check the validity of their benefits. There is a demand for increasingly intelligent pedagogically-grounded computer technology. In this paper, we discuss adaptive, crowd sourced, and primarily educational technology; targeted at software development students. The proposed technology caters for either individual or group learning. It differentiates itself from other tutoring and programming support technologies as it will continually monitor and assess students’ performance in each phase of the educating process. It will also guide them in their learning through interactive feedback and adaptive curriculum delivery that suits both their current levels of learning and preferred learning styles. Keywords: Technology and Education; Coding; Teaching and Learning; Computer Programming; Adaptive Software

Technology for Good: Innovative Use of Technology by Charities

Technology for Good identifies ten technologies being used by charitable organizations in innovative ways. The report briefly introduces each technology and provides examples of how those technologies are being used.Examples are drawn from a broad spectrum of organizations working on widely varied issues around the globe. This makes Technology for Good a unique repository of inspiration for the public and private sectors, funders, and other change makers who support the creation and use of technology for social good

Crowdsourcing Programming Assignments with CrowdSorcerer

Small automatically assessed programming assignments are an often used resource for learning programming. Creating sufficiently large amounts of such assignments is, however, time consuming. As a consequence, offering large quantities of practice assignments to students is not always possible. CrowdSorcerer is an embeddable open-source system that students and teachers alike can use for creating and evaluating small automatically assessed programming assignments. While creating programming assignments, the students also write simple input-output -tests, and are gently introduced to the basics of testing. Students can also evaluate the assignments of others and provide feedback on them, which exposes them to code written by others early in their education. In this article we both describe the CrowdSorcerer system and our experiences in using the system in a large undergraduate programming course. Moreover, we discuss the motivation for crowdsourcing course assignments and present some usage statistics.Peer reviewe

Lessons Learned From Four Computing Education Crowdsourcing Systems

Crowdsourcing is a general term that describes the practice of many individuals working collectively to achieve a common goal or complete a task, often involving the generation of content. In an educational context, crowdsourcing of learning materials- where students create resources that can be used by other learners- offers several benefits. Students benefit from the act of producing resources as well as from using the resources. Despite benefits, instructors may be hesitant to adopt crowdsourcing for several reasons, such as concerns around the quality of content produced by students and the perceptions students may have of creating resources for their peers. While prior work has explored crowdsourcing concerns within the context of individual tools, lessons that are generalisable across multiple platforms and derived from practical use can provide considerably more robust insights. In this perspective article, we present four crowdsourcing tools that we have developed and used in computing classrooms. From our previous studies and experience, we derive lessons which shed new light on some of the concerns that are typical for instructors looking to adopt such tools. We find that across multiple contexts, students are capable of generating high quality learning content which provides good coverage of key concepts. Although students do appear hesitant to engage with new kinds of activities, various types of incentives have proven effective. Finally, although studies on learning effects have shown mixed results, no negative outcomes have been observed. In light of these lessons, we hope to see a greater uptake and use of crowdsourcing in computing education.Peer reviewe

Complete LibTech 2013 Print Program

PDF of the complete print program from the 2013 Library Technology Conferenc