Experiences on Using TRAKLA2 to Teach Spatial Data Algorithms

AbstractThis paper reports on the results of a two year project in which visual algorithm simulation exercises were developed for a spatial data algorithms course. The success of the project is studied from several point of views, i.e., from developer's, teachers's, and student's perspective. The amount of work, learning outcomes, and feasibility of the system has been estimated based on the data gathered during the project. The results are encouraging, which motivates to extend the concept also for other courses in the future

Promoting Programming Learning. Engagement, Automatic Assessment with Immediate Feedback in Visualizations

The skill of programming is a key asset for every computer science student. Many studies have shown that this is a hard skill to learn and the outcomes of programming courses have often been substandard. Thus, a range of methods and tools have been developed to assist students’ learning processes. One of the biggest fields in computer science education is the use of visualizations as a learning aid and many visualization based tools have been developed to aid the learning process during last few decades. Studies conducted in this thesis focus on two different visualizationbased tools TRAKLA2 and ViLLE. This thesis includes results from multiple empirical studies about what kind of effects the introduction and usage of these tools have on students’ opinions and performance, and what kind of implications there are from a teacher’s point of view. The results from studies in this thesis show that students preferred to do web-based exercises, and felt that those exercises contributed to their learning. The usage of the tool motivated students to work harder during their course, which was shown in overall course performance and drop-out statistics. We have also shown that visualization-based tools can be used to enhance the learning process, and one of the key factors is the higher and active level of engagement (see. Engagement Taxonomy by Naps et al., 2002). The automatic grading accompanied with immediate feedback helps students to overcome obstacles during the learning process, and to grasp the key element in the learning task. These kinds of tools can help us to cope with the fact that many programming courses are overcrowded with limited teaching resources. These tools allows us to tackle this problem by utilizing automatic assessment in exercises that are most suitable to be done in the web (like tracing and simulation) since its supports students’ independent learning regardless of time and place. In summary, we can use our course’s resources more efficiently to increase the quality of the learning experience of the students and the teaching experience of the teacher, and even increase performance of the students. There are also methodological results from this thesis which contribute to developing insight into the conduct of empirical evaluations of new tools or techniques. When we evaluate a new tool, especially one accompanied with visualization, we need to give a proper introduction to it and to the graphical notation used by tool. The standard procedure should also include capturing the screen with audio to confirm that the participants of the experiment are doing what they are supposed to do. By taken such measures in the study of the learning impact of visualization support for learning, we can avoid drawing false conclusion from our experiments. As computer science educators, we face two important challenges. Firstly, we need to start to deliver the message in our own institution and all over the world about the new – scientifically proven – innovations in teaching like TRAKLA2 and ViLLE. Secondly, we have the relevant experience of conducting teaching related experiment, and thus we can support our colleagues to learn essential know-how of the research based improvement of their teaching. This change can transform academic teaching into publications and by utilizing this approach we can significantly increase the adoption of the new tools and techniques, and overall increase the knowledge of best-practices. In future, we need to combine our forces and tackle these universal and common problems together by creating multi-national and multiinstitutional research projects. We need to create a community and a platform in which we can share these best practices and at the same time conduct multi-national research projects easily.Siirretty Doriast

Customizable and scalable automated assessment of C/C++ programming assignments

The correction of exercises in programming courses is a laborious task that has traditionally been performed in a manual way. This situation, in turn, delays the access by students to feedback that can contribute significantly to their training as future professionals. Over the years, several approaches have been proposed to automate the assessment of students' programs. Static analysis is a known technique that can partially simulate the process of manual code review performed by lecturers. As such, it is a plausible option to assess whether students' solutions meet the requirements imposed on the assignments. However, implementing a personalized analysis beyond the rules included in existing tools may be a complex task for the lecturer without a mechanism that guides the work. In this paper, we present a method to provide automated and specific feedback to immediately inform students about their mistakes in programming courses. To that end, we developed the CAC++ library, which enables constructing tailored static analysis programs for C/C++ practices. The library allows for great flexibility and personalization of verifications to adjust them to each particular task, overcoming the limitations of most of the existing assessment tools. Our approach to providing specific feedback has been evaluated for a period of three academic years in a course related to object-oriented programming. The library allowed lecturers to reduce the size of the static analysis programs developed for this course. During this period, the academic results improved and undergraduates positively valued the aid offered when undertaking the implementation of assignments.Universidad de Cádiz, Grant/Award Numbers: sol-201500054192-tra, sol-201600064680-tra; Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Grant/Award Number: RTI2018-093608-B-C33; European Regional Development Fun

Hacia la Evaluación Continua Automática de Prácticas de Programación

En el contexto de implantación y aplicación del Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior se hace necesario disponer de herramientas docentes que faciliten el seguimiento y la orientación personalizada y continuada del proceso de aprendizaje del alumno. En este trabajo se presenta un sistema de evaluación continua automática de prácticas de programación, vía web, basado en la realimentación. De esta manera, la evaluación proporciona información inmediata al alumno de los errores cometidos en las prácticas, permitiendo que puedan ser corregidas y reevaluadas repetidas veces. Este esquema establece un marco de evaluación, donde el alumno puede aumentar su motivación y decidir la nota que desea obtener. Los errores susceptibles de ser identificados automáticamente son de diversos tipos: incumplimiento de especificaciones de interfaz, errores de estilo y de diseño de codificación, errores de funcionalidad, errores graves de ejecución e insuficiencias en las pruebas

Sähköisen arvioinnin ja opetusteknologian tila peruskoulun yläluokilla ja lukioissa opettajien näkökulmasta

Suomalaiset peruskoulut ja lukiot käyvät parhaillaan läpi opetuksen sähköistymisen murrosvaihetta. Opetuksen ja oppimisen osana käytetään yhä enenevässä määrin kirjavaa joukkoa tietoteknisiä laitteita. Oppimateriaaleja on jo nyt tarjolla runsaasti sähköisessä muodossa, ja verkkopohjaisten oppimisympäristöjen käyttö kasvaa. Tässä niin sanotussa digiloikassa näkyvimpänä valtakunnallisena tavoitteena on ylioppilaskirjoitusten sähköistyminen kokonaan vuoden 2019 loppuun mennessä. Sähköistymisen pedagogisen onnistumisen ratkaisevat viime kädessä opettajat, minkä johdosta heidät asetettiin tässä tutkielmassa keskiöön. Tutkielmassa pyrittiin peruskoulun ylempien luokkien ja lukion opettajilla teetetyn kyselytutkimuksen avulla tuottamaan tietoa koulujen tietoteknisen laitteiston ja sähköisen arvioinnin tilasta. Opettajilta selvitettiin, millä laitteilla he haluavat sähköistymisen toteuttaa, ja mikä on heidän yleinen suhtautumisensa tietotekniikan opetuskäyttöön. Lisäksi sähköisiä ylioppilaskirjoituksia silmällä pitäen tutkittiin opettajien teettämää sähköisten tehtävien ja kokeiden määrää. Kyselytutkimus toteutettiin loppukevään 2016 aikana sähköisesti, ja se lähetettiin jokaisesta Suomen maakunnasta satunnaisesti valittuihin vähintään kahteen lukioon tai yhteiskouluun sekä opettajien suosimiin keskusteluryhmiin. Kyselyyn vastasi 161 opettajaa 59 eri paikkakunnalta. Vastaajista kolme neljäsosaa opetti lukioissa ja loput peruskouluissa. Tutkimuksen tulosten perusteella opettajat suosivat kannettavaa tietokonetta selvästi yli muiden mitattujen laitetyyppien. He suhtautuivat tietotekniikkaan ja opetuksen sähköistymiseen keskimäärin melko positiivisesti, mutta monia huoletti oppilaidensa tietotekninen taitotaso kouluasioihin liittyen. Sähköisiä kokeita opettajat teettivät edelleen vähän, ja liki kolmasosa ei ollenkaan. Asiasanat: opetusteknologia, sähköinen arviointi, kyselytutkimu

The feasibility of automatic assessment and feedback

In this study, we report on the results of studies in which two randomized groups of students are monitored while they solved exercises in a Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) course. The first group did the exercises on the web and the second one in the classroom sessions. A web based system was employed that was able to give feedback and automatically assess the exercises. The research question was to find out how we should introduce the self study material and automatically assessed exercises to the students in order to maximize their learning experience and to avoid drop outs. In addition, we surveyed the students ’ attitude towards www-based exercises by using questionaries. The students were asked what kind of exercises they would prefer to do in DSA courses as well as how they would assess their own learning experience in the three different setups (human guided, web based or mixed). All these studies were carried out simultaneously in two different universities. It is not surprising that the results suggest to introduce easy and human guided exercises at the very beginning of the course. However, we conclude that currently there is an emerging need for both webbased and classroom exercises. The recommended way to introduce the web-based exercises in DSA courses is by combining these two approaches. There is a set of exercises that are best suitable to be solved and automatically assessed on the web while the rest of the exercises are best suitable for traditional classroom sessions. We believe that the results of this study can be generalized to cover also other similar learning environments than that used in this research to give automated feedback for the students, and thus improve the learning experience