Hiroaki Hashiura

Proposals of a Method Detectiong Learners' Difficult Points in Object Modeling Exercises and a Tool to Support the Method

In recent years, practical software development exercises have been carried out in many higher education institutions. To carry out the exercises effectively, it is important that teachers understand the difficulty of learners in exercises and advise appropriately for it. Currently, a common way to check the results of the exercises is that teachers review artifacts which learners submitted. However, there is a problem in this way that it cant obtain information regarding the learners artifacts creation process. Therefore, teachers cant fully understand difficulties of the learners. We focus on the learners artifacts creation process and propose a method for detecting learners difficult points during the exercises. We develop a tool that collects the class diagram creation process by learners during exercises and analyze it.

An Environment for Collecting Fine-Grained Development Records to Help with Programming Exercise

In order to cultivate human resources with an advanced skill of software development, it is necessary to make the learner acquire the programming technology as the basis at an early point and with certainty. Programming education is conducted with a focus on exercise, and it is often the case that the result is made submitted as a report, in order to evaluate the degree of fixation for the knowledge by the exercise. By using the report, one can check the final result of the exercise, but it is difficult for the educator to know the process by the learner to complete making the software, or on its way, to face what kind of problems are faced and to cope with them. In this study, in conjunction with Eclipse, a learning environment to support software development exercise is constructed by collecting fine-grained record of learners programming in real time and by storing it to the server connected to the network.

Effectiveness of Automated Grading Tool Utilizing Similarity for Conceptual Modeling

In recent years, a system engineer is required for advanced modeling because systems have become more complicated. A lecture of model diagrams has been carried out in many universities for training system engineers. The lecture has the problem that teachers cannot give enough feedback to students. The problem is due to a high degree of freedom of the model diagram. The model diagrams have words that have equal meaning and have different expressions. Teachers should consider these features when grading deliverables of students. In addition, a common way to grade deliverables is that teachers check “model diagrams” by hands. So, teachers need a lot of time when grading. Students cannot review their own deliverables. In this research, we develop a tool that gives feedback for students in lectures. We focus on conceptual modeling using notation based on class diagrams. Also, the tool automatically giving feedback for students at near real time. Teachers judge words that have equal meaning and have different expressions. The tool uses these judgements when grading deliverables of students. The content of feedback is a result of grading all operations. The results are visualized by a line chart. We experimented and verified the adequacy of the proposed method. We confirmed the usefulness of the method and the correlation between result of grading and time of unused KIfU.

A Method for Collecting Learners’ Thinking Process in ER Modeling Exercises and Its Application Experiment

In general ER modeling exercises, it is difficult for teachers to grasp and/or trace learners artifact-creation process. Therefore, there is a problem that teachers cannot understand whether or not learners create their artifacts with the correct editing process, thinking process. In this study, we describe a method, its support system to collect, visualize data of learners editing, thinking process in their artifact-creation process. We also describe the result of an application experiment of our method, system.