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

The diagnosing behaviour of intelligent tutoring systems

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) determine the quality of student responses by means of a diagnostic process, and use this information for providing feedback and determining a student’s progress. This paper studies how ITSs diagnose student responses. In a systematic literature review we compare the diagnostic processes of 40 ITSs in various domains. We investigate what kinds of diagnoses are performed and how they are obtained, and how the processes compare across domains. The analysis identifies eight aspects that ITSs diagnose: correctness, difference, redundancy, type of error, common error, order, preference, and time. All ITSs diagnose correctness of a step. Mathematics tutors diagnose common errors more often than programming tutors, and programming tutors diagnose type of error more often than mathematics tutors. We discuss a general model for representing diagnostic processes