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Automated Feedback Framework for Introductory Programming Courses

Published: 11 July 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Using automated grading tools to provide feedback to students is common in Computer Science education. The first step of automated grading is to find defects in the student program. However, finding bugs in code has never been easy. Comparing computation results using a fixed set of test cases is still the most common way to determine correctness among current automated grading tools. It takes time and effort to design a good set of test cases that can test the student code thoroughly. In practice, tests used for grading are often insufficient for accurate diagnosis.
In this paper, we present our utilization of industrial automated testing on student assignments in an introductory programming course. We implemented a framework to collect student codes and apply industrial automated testing to their codes. Then we interpreted the results obtained from testing in a way that students can understand easily. We deployed our framework on five different introductory C programming assignments here at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.The results show that the automated feedback generation framework can discover more errors inside student submissions and can provide timely and useful feedback to both instructors and students. A total of 142 missed bugs were found within 446 submissions. More than 50% of students received their feedback within 3 minutes of submission.

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I. Huet, O. R. Pacheco, J. Tavares, and G. Weir. New challenges in teaching introductory programming courses: a case study. In Frontiers in Education, 2004. FIE 2004. 34th Annual, pages T2H-5. IEEE, 2004.
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G. Jianxiong. Auto grading tool for introductory programming courses. Master';s thesis, University of Illinois, Champaign, 2015.
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C. F. Kemerer and M. C. Paulk. The impact of design and code reviews on software quality: An empirical study based on PSP data. Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on, 35(4):534--550, 2009.
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Cited By

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  • (2024)VG: Automatic Grading of D3 VisualizationsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.332718130:1(617-627)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Implementation of Self-Learning Topic for Developing Interactive Mobile Application in Flutter Programming Learning Assistance System2024 ASU International Conference in Emerging Technologies for Sustainability and Intelligent Systems (ICETSIS)10.1109/ICETSIS61505.2024.10459432(1103-1107)Online publication date: 28-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Feedback Generation for Automatic Programming Assessment Utilizing AI Techniques: An Initial Analysis of Systematic Mapping StudiesAdvances in Intelligent Computing Techniques and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-59711-4_23(257-272)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2024
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  1. Automated Feedback Framework for Introductory Programming Courses

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ITiCSE '16: Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education
    July 2016
    394 pages
    ISBN:9781450342315
    DOI:10.1145/2899415
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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    Publication History

    Published: 11 July 2016

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    Author Tags

    1. auto grader
    2. computer science education
    3. concolic testing

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    ITiCSE '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 56 of 147 submissions, 38%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)VG: Automatic Grading of D3 VisualizationsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.332718130:1(617-627)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2024
    • (2024)Implementation of Self-Learning Topic for Developing Interactive Mobile Application in Flutter Programming Learning Assistance System2024 ASU International Conference in Emerging Technologies for Sustainability and Intelligent Systems (ICETSIS)10.1109/ICETSIS61505.2024.10459432(1103-1107)Online publication date: 28-Jan-2024
    • (2024)Feedback Generation for Automatic Programming Assessment Utilizing AI Techniques: An Initial Analysis of Systematic Mapping StudiesAdvances in Intelligent Computing Techniques and Applications10.1007/978-3-031-59711-4_23(257-272)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2024
    • (2023)Helping to provide adaptive feedback to novice programmers: a framework to assist the Teachers2023 18th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies (CISTI)10.23919/CISTI58278.2023.10212000(1-6)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2023
    • (2023)A Taxonomy to Assist TAs in Providing Adaptive Feedback to Novice Programmers2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343309(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Exploring Machine Learning Methods to Identify Patterns in Students' Solutions to Programming Assignments2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10342972(1-6)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Development of Automatic Source Code Evaluation Tests Using Grey-Box Methods: A Programming Education Case StudyIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.331769411(106772-106792)Online publication date: 2023
    • (2022)Network Visualization and Assessment of Student Reasoning About ConditionalsProceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 110.1145/3502718.3524793(255-261)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2022
    • (2022)Visualization of Students’ Solutions as a Sequential Network2022 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON52537.2022.9766502(1189-1194)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2022
    • (2022)Professional Development Strategies and Recommendations for High School Teachers to Teach Computer Science OnlineComputers in the Schools10.1080/07380569.2022.212734340:2(133-151)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2022
    • Show More Cited By

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