Teemu Rajala

On Study Habits on an Introductory Course on Programming.

Computer aided assessment systems enable the collection of exact time and date information on students’ activity on a course. These activity patterns reflect students’ study habits and these study habits further predict students’ likelihood to pass or fail a course. By identifying such patterns, those who design the courses can enforce positive study habits and to prevent or minimize habits that lead to poor student performance. Hypothetically, by identifying and adjusting the short-term patterns, the teachers might be able to do the same during the course. This publication examines students’ short-term study habits on an introductory level programming course and presents multiple statistically significant connections between students’ assignment submission patterns and their respective final grades. Students who receive the highest grade start and finish their work early, do not work on weekends, and do not work at night, whereas those who fail the course do not show similar behavior but exhibit significant enrichment among those who work large amounts during the night. Course’s mandatory tutorial sessions that act both as assignment release events and as collaborative assignment solving sessions strongly increase assignment submission counts regardless of the students’ final grades and ensure an early start to solving the assignments, possibly preventing those who would otherwise fail the course from starting their work near deadlines.

Breaking the Programming Language Barrier: Using Program Visualizations to Transfer Programming Knowledge in One Programming Language to Another

The transition from one programming language to another is an issue, which usually needs to be addressed in programming curricula, as the learning is typically started with syntactically easier languages. This study explores the possibility to use a short interactive tutorial with visualization exercises to ease the transition from Python to Java. In the experiment, the students first took a pre-test to measure their earlier programming knowledge with Python. After that, they used the tutorial with visualization exercises for 45 minutes. The tutorial and the exercises were designed to underline the syntactical and structural differences between Python and Java. Finally, the students answered to post-test, which contained questions similar to pre-test, but in Java. The results indicate, that the students were able to obtain similar program comprehension skills in Java that they previously had with Python. Moreover, the students seem to think that using such tutorials is highly beneficial in the transition. Hence, we conclude, that ViLLE can be effectively used to ease the transition from one language to another.

Interactive Learning Content for Introductory Computer Science Course Using the ViLLE Exercise Framework

Interactive learning content is a key to the success of online learning materials. Hence, many systems for creating and delivering interactive content has been developed in academia. In practice, however, teachers have to choose the suitable system from the multitude of available choices, thus limiting themselves to the features of that system. Furthermore, educational researchers have data collected in different formats by different systems. In this paper, we describe how we worked around these issues when implementing a new introductory computer science course using the ViLLE learning environment. The new course consists of six main topics, each of which is covered on a lecture and an online tutorial. The tutorials contain textual material together with numerous automatically assessed exercises with visual and immediate feedback. As we developed the course material, we integrated two educational systems - JSAV for algorithm simulation exercises and js-parsons for program construction tasks - into the ViLLE environment in order to use them on the course. This was enabled by the use of the framework for creating exercises into the ViLLE learning environment. The framework aims at easing the inclusion of interactive exercise into the environment by exercise system developers. In the paper, we briefly describe the course, the ViLLE exercise framework and out technical solution, as well as student results from the course and feedback on the exercise types.

How does collaboration affect algorithm learning? A case study using TRAKLA2 algorithm visualization tool

Algorithm visualization tools can potentially be used to help novices to learn the abstract concepts of algorithms and data structures. Still, the methods of using such tools must be carefully considered. We conducted a study to find out if the TRAKLA2 algorithm visualization tool can be used to teach these concepts effectively. Moreover, we wanted to find out if there is a difference in learning when students use the tool in collaboration with another student. Students participated in a two-hour lab session, where half of them used the tool independently, and the other half in collaboration with a peer. We found out, that using the tool had a substantial effect on the learning outcome for both groups. However, the collaborative use did not have any additional effect on the learning.

Automatic assessment of program visualization exercises

ViLLE is a visualization tool for teaching programming to novice programmers. It has an extendable support for multiple programming languages which enables language-independent learning of programming. As a new feature, ViLLE supports automatically assessed exercises. The exercises can be easily integrated into a programming course by using the TRAKLA2 web environment.

ViLLE – collaborative education tool: Designing and utilizing an exercise-based learning environment

Automatically assessed exercises with immediate feedback can be a powerful tool for enhancing the effectiveness of education. In this article, we discuss the design and implementation of a collaborative learning tool called ViLLE. The design is based on experiences gathered from a previously developed and thoroughly researched visualization tool. Based on our earlier results and current educational theories, we developed four design principles upon which ViLLE is constructed. ViLLE includes various different exercise types which were designed to assist in the learning of computer science, mathematics and other subjects. It also supports different learning and teaching methods, such as pair programming and peer review. To justify the development of a new environment, we present four diverse case studies where ViLLE was utilized successfully: programming education, high school matriculation exam, elementary school mathematics and student counseling at university level. The results obtained from the studies seem to confirm that ViLLE can be used effectively to enhance student motivation and to improve student performance in various heterogeneous educational setups.