CodeProcess Charts: Visualizing the Process of Writing Code

Instructors of computer programming courses evaluate student progress on code submissions, exams, and other activities. The evaluation of code submissions is typically a summative assessment that gives very little insight into the process the student used when designing and writing the code. Thus, a tool that offers instructors a view into how students actually write their code could have broad impacts on assessment, intervention, instructional design, and plagiarism detection. In this article we propose an interactive software tool with a novel visualization that includes both static and dynamic views of the process that students take to complete computer programming assignments. We report results of an exploratory think-aloud study in which instructors offer thoughts as to the utility and potential of the tool. In the think-aloud study, we observed that the instructors easily identified multiple coding strategies (or the lack of thereof), were able to recognize plagiarism, and noticed a clear need for wider dissemination of tools for visualizing the programming process.Peer reviewe

Programming Process, Patterns and Behaviors: Insights from Keystroke Analysis of CS1 Students

With all the experiences and knowledge, I take programming as granted. But learning to program is still difficult for a lot of introductory programming students. This is also one of the major reasons for a high attrition rate in CS1 courses. If instructors were able to identify struggling students then effective interventions can be taken to help them. This thesis is a research done on programming process data that can be collected non-intrusively from CS1 students when they are programming. The data and their findings can be leveraged in understanding students’ thought process, detecting patterns and identifying behaviors that could possibly help instructors to identify struggling students, help them and design better courses

Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Retention in Introductory Programming

The introductory programming course is one of the very first courses that computer science students encounter. The course is challenging not only because of the content, but also due to the challenges related to finding a place in a new community. Many have little knowledge of what to expect from university studies, some struggle to adjust their study behavior to match the expected pace, and a few simply cannot attend instruction due to e.g. family or work constraints. As a consequence, a considerable number of students end up failing the course, or pass the course with substandard knowledge. This leads to students failing to proceed in their studies at a desirable pace, to students who struggle with the subsequent courses, and to students who completely drop out from their studies. This thesis explores the issue of retention in introductory programming courses through multiple viewpoints. We first analyze how the teaching approaches reported in literature affect introductory programming course pass rates. Then, changes on the retention at the University of Helsinki are studied using two separate approaches. The first approach is the use of a contemporary variant of Cognitive Apprenticeship called the Extreme Apprenticeship method, and the second approach is the use of a massive open online course (MOOC) in programming for recruiting students before they enter their university studies. Furthermore, data from an automatic assessment system implemented for the purposes of this thesis is studied to determine how novices write their first lines of code, and what factors contribute to the feeling of difficulty in learning programming. On average, the teaching approaches described in the literature improve the course pass rates by one third. However, the literature tends to neglect the effect of intervention on the subsequent courses. In both studies at the University of Helsinki, retention improved considerably, and the students on average also fare better in subsequent courses. Finally, the data that has been gathered with the automatic assessment system provides an excellent starting point for future research.Ohjelmointi on nykyajan käsityöläistaito, jolle on akuutti tarve työelämässä. Tämän taidon opettelua harkitseva tietää harvoin, kuinka riippuvainen yhteiskuntamme on ohjelmoinnin tuotoksista eli ohjelmistoista. Ilman ohjelmointia esimerkiksi yhteydenpito, kaupankäynti, matkustaminen ja terveydenhuolto olisivat heikommalla tasolla. Puhelimet eivät toimisi, internettiä ei olisi, eikä lääketeollisuus pystyisi käsittelemään yhtä suuria datamassoja uusia parannuskeinoja etsiessä. Kukaan ei olisi kirjoittanut ohjelmaa, joka auttoi avaruuteen pääsemisessä. Väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan ohjelmoinnin opetusmenetelmiä ja niiden toimivuutta korkeakouluissa sekä esitellään kognitiiviseen oppipoikamalliin (Cognitive Apprenticeship) perustuva “ajatuskäsityöläisten” opetusmenetelmä tehostettu kisällioppiminen (Extreme Apprenticeship). Tehostetussa kisällioppimisessa oppimista edesauttava yksilöllinen ohjaus on mahdollista skaalata satoja opiskelijoita sisältäville kursseille. Väitöskirjatyössä ehdotetaan lisäksi kaikille avoimen verkkokurssin (MOOC) käyttöä yliopisto-opiskelijoiden valintaan sekä tarkastellaan tällaisen valintaväylän toimivuutta tietojenkäsittelytieteen alalla. Väitöskirja käsittelee myös ohjelmointitehtävien automaattista arviointia ja esittelee tähän tarkoitetun Test My Code -järjestelmän, jota voidaan käyttää askeleittaisten ohjeiden ja palautteen antamiseen aloitteleville ohjelmoijille sekä tiedon keräämiseen ohjelmointiprosessissa esiintyvistä ongelmista. Tällaista tietoa voidaan tutkia oppimisanalytiikan menetelmin. Väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan myös aloittelevien ohjelmoijien ensimmäisten ohjelmien kirjoittamisessa esiintyviä ongelmia sekä esitellään ohjelmointitehtävien vaikeuden ennustamiseen sopivia menetelmiä

openHTML: Assessing Barriers and Designing Tools for Learning Web Development

In this dissertation, I argue that society increasingly recognizes the value of widespread computational literacy and that one of the most common ways that people are exposed to creative computing today is through web development. Prior research has investigated how beginners learn a wide range of programming languages in a variety of domains, from computer science majors taking introductory programming courses to end-user developers maintaining spreadsheets. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the experiences people have learning web development. What barriers do beginners face when authoring their first web pages? What mistakes do they commonly make when writing HTML and CSS? What are the computational skills and concepts with which they engage? How can tools and practices be designed to support these activities? Through a series of studies, interleaved with the iterative design of an experimental web editor for novices called openHTML, this dissertation aims to fill this gap in the literature and address these questions. In drawing connections between my findings and the existing computing education literature, my goal is to attain a deeper understanding of the skills and concepts at play when beginners learn web development, and to broaden notions about how people can develop computational literacy. This dissertation makes the following contributions: * An account of the barriers students face in an introductory web development course, contextualizing difficulties with learning to read and write code within the broad activity of web development. * The implementation of a web editor called openHTML, which has been designed to support learners by mitigating non-coding aspects of web development so that they can attend to learning HTML and CSS. * A detailed taxonomy of errors people make when writing HTML and CSS to construct simple web pages, derived from an intention-based analysis. * A fine-grained analysis of HTML and CSS syntax errors students make in the initial weeks of a web development course, how they resolve them, and the role validation plays in these outcomes. * Evidence for basic web development as a rich activity involving numerous skills and concepts that can support foundational computational literacy.Ph.D., Information Studies -- Drexel University, 201

Interaction-aware development environments: recording, mining, and leveraging IDE interactions to analyze and support the development flow

Nowadays, software development is largely carried out using Integrated Development Environments, or IDEs. An IDE is a collection of tools and facilities to support the most diverse software engineering activities, such as writing code, debugging, and program understanding. The fact that they are integrated enables developers to find all the tools needed for the development in the same place. Each activity is composed of many basic events, such as clicking on a menu item in the IDE, opening a new user interface to browse the source code of a method, or adding a new statement in the body of a method. While working, developers generate thousands of these interactions, that we call fine-grained IDE interaction data. We believe this data is a valuable source of information that can be leveraged to enable better analyses and to offer novel support to developers. However, this data is largely neglected by modern IDEs. In this dissertation we propose the concept of "Interaction-Aware Development Environments": IDEs that collect, mine, and leverage the interactions of developers to support and simplify their workflow. We formulate our thesis as follows: Interaction-Aware Development Environments enable novel and in- depth analyses of the behavior of software developers and set the ground to provide developers with effective and actionable support for their activities inside the IDE. For example, by monitoring how developers navigate source code, the IDE could suggest the program entities that are potentially relevant for a particular task. Our research focuses on three main directions: 1. Modeling and Persisting Interaction Data. The first step to make IDEs aware of interaction data is to overcome its ephemeral nature. To do so we have to model this new source of data and to persist it, making it available for further use. 2. Interpreting Interaction Data. One of the biggest challenges of our research is making sense of the millions of interactions generated by developers. We propose several models to interpret this data, for example, by reconstructing high-level development activities from interaction histories or measure the navigation efficiency of developers. 3. Supporting Developers with Interaction Data. Novel IDEs can use the potential of interaction data to support software development. For example, they can identify the UI components that are potentially unnecessary for the future and suggest developers to close them, reducing the visual cluttering of the IDE

Uniform Web-based learning environment for introductory programming course

Ohjelmoinnin massakursseilla käytetään usein erilaisia teknisiä työkaluja. Näitä ovat esimerkiksi oppimisenhallintajärjestelmät ja automaattista palautetta antavat työkalut. Nämä ovat kuitenkin monesti toisistaan irrallisia, mikä aiheuttaa oppilaille usein hämmennystä ja ylimääräistä työtä. Tässä diplomityössä vastaamme kysymyksiin: ''Miten pystymme rakentamaan yhtenäisen ohjelmoinnin oppimisympäristön? Mitä osia sen pitää sisältää ja miten näiden tulisi kommunikoida keskenään?''. Kysymyksiin vastataan tapaustutkimuksen kautta rakentamalla uusi oppimisympäristö Tampereen teknillisessä yliopistossa pidettävälle opintojaksolle Johdatus ohjelmointiin. Rakentamisen lähtökohtana on, että ympäristössä käytetään oppimisenhallintajärjestelmänä Aalto-yliopistossa kehitettyä A+:aa. Aluksi tutkimme vaatimuksia, joita opintojakso kohdistaa ympäristölle, ja määrittelemme komponentit, joista ympäristö rakentuu. Komponenttien tunnistamisen jälkeen hahmottelemme ympäristölle arkkitehtuurin käyttäen apuna sovellettua 4+1 -arkkitehtuurimallia ja tarkoitukseen sopivia tekniikoita, kuten REST. Tämän jälkeen tutustumme kirjallisuudesta löytyviin komponenttitoteutuksiin ja valitsemme niistä sopivimmat. Työn tuloksena on yhtenäinen oppimisympäristö, joka rakentuu A+-oppimisenhallintajärjestelmän ympärille. A+:aan on toteutettu REST-rajapinta, jonka kautta se kommunikoi oppilaan IDE:n ja ympäristön muiden komponenttien kanssa. Oppilaat pääsevät kaikkiin ominaisuuksiin käsiksi yhden kirjautumispisteen kautta ja mm. voivat palauttaa tehtävät suoraan IDE:stä. A+:aan tehdyt palautukset siirtyvät Mooc-grader--nimiselle komponentille, joka tarkistaa ne automatisoiduilla testeillä ja palauttaa tulokset A+:aan. Toteuttamamme oppimisympäristö helpottaa oppilaiden työskentelyä edelliseen kurssilla käytettyyn järjestelmään verrattuna. Enää opiskelijan ei tarvitse kirjautua järjestelmästä toiseen, eikä etsiä tehtävien palautuspaikkoja, vaan hän voi palauttaa tehtävän IDE:stä napin painalluksella