Juha Helminen
Petri Ihantola
Ville Karavirta
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we report on the analysis of a novel type of automatically recorded detailed programming session data collected on a university-level web programming course. We present a method and an implementation of collecting rich data on how students learning to program edit and execute code and explore its use in examining learners' behavior. The data collection instrument is an in-browser Python programming environment that integrates an editor, an execution environment, and an interactive Python console and is used to deliver programming assignments with automatic feedback. Most importantly, the environment records learners' interaction within it. We have implemented tools for viewing these traces and demonstrate their potential in learning about the programming processes of learners and of benefiting computing education research and the teaching of programming.
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Index Terms
- Recording and analyzing in-browser programming sessions
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Reviews
Donald J. Bagert
The analysis of automatically recorded programming session data collected during a college level course on web programming is the primary focus of this paper. Data is collected through an in-browser Python integrated development environment (IDE) with an editor, a Python console, and an execution environment. The authors' goal is to demonstrate the potential benefit to both computing education research and to teaching programming through collecting data on the programming processes of introductory-level college students. The overall content of this paper is background intensive; half of the ten-page paper is devoted to previous research involving automatically recorded programming sessions. This degree of background is very useful, but seems more suited to a much longer journal paper. The next section (one page) is used to describe the data collection environment and the experiment, which involves students doing three different programming assignments and receiving feedback through unit tests provided by the instructors. Most of the remainder of the paper focuses on the analysis and results stemming from this experiment. Figures with examples of screen captures of the console during programming are very useful. This is a good conference paper. Hopefully, the authors will be able to publish their results in a journal, which will provide them the avenue to discuss more of the details and results of their research. Online Computing Reviews Service
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