Teaching Computer Programming in Online Courses - How Unit Tests Allow for Automated Feedback and Grading

Edgar Seemann

2014

Abstract

Online courses raise many new challenges. It is particularly difficult to teach subjects, which focus on technical principles and require students to practice. In order to motivate and support students we need to provide assistance and feedback. When the number of students in online courses increases to several thousand participants this assistance and feedback cannot be handled by the teaching staff alone. In this paper we propose a system, which allows to automatically validate programming exercises at a fine-grained level using unit tests. Thus, students get immediate feedback, which helps them understanding the encountered problems. The proposed system offers a wide range of possible exercise types for programming exercises. These range from exercises where students need to provide only code snippets to exercises including complex algorithms. Moreover, the system allows teachers to grade student exercises automatically. Unlike common grading tools for programming exercises, it can deal with partial solutions and avoids an all-or-nothing style grading.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Seemann E. (2014). Teaching Computer Programming in Online Courses - How Unit Tests Allow for Automated Feedback and Grading . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-020-8, pages 421-426. DOI: 10.5220/0004939304210426

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu14,
author={Edgar Seemann},
title={Teaching Computer Programming in Online Courses - How Unit Tests Allow for Automated Feedback and Grading},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2014},
pages={421-426},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004939304210426},
isbn={978-989-758-020-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Teaching Computer Programming in Online Courses - How Unit Tests Allow for Automated Feedback and Grading
SN - 978-989-758-020-8
AU - Seemann E.
PY - 2014
SP - 421
EP - 426
DO - 10.5220/0004939304210426