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Teaching the art of functional programming using automated grading (experience report)

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Brigitte PientkaAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 3, Issue ICFP

Article No.: 115, Pages 1 - 15

https://doi.org/10.1145/3341719

Published: 26 July 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Online programming platforms have immense potential to improve students' educational experience. They make programming more accessible, as no installation is required; and automatic grading facilities provide students with immediate feedback on their code, allowing them to to fix bugs and address errors in their understanding right away. However, these graders tend to focus heavily on the functional correctness of a solution, neglecting other aspects of students' code and thereby causing students to miss out on a significant amount of valuable feedback.

In this paper, we recount our experience in using the Learn-OCaml online programming platform to teach functional programming in a second-year university course on programming languages and paradigms. Moreover, we explore how to leverage Learn-OCaml's automated grading infrastructure to make it easy to write more expressive graders that give students feedback on properties of their code beyond simple input/output correctness, in order to effectively teach elements of functional programming style. In particular, we describe our extensions to the Learn-OCaml platform that evaluate students on test quality and code style.

By providing these tools and a suite of our own homework problems and associated graders, we aim to promote functional programming education, enhance students' educational experience, and make teaching and learning typed functional programming more accessible to instructors and students alike, in our community and beyond.

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Cited By

Messer MBrown NKölling MShi M(2024)Automated Grading and Feedback Tools for Programming Education: A Systematic ReviewACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363651524:1(1-43)Online publication date: 19-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636515
Rocha HCosta ETedesco P(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
https://doi.org/10.23919/CISTI58278.2023.10212000
Geng CXu WXu YPientka BSi XDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)Identifying Different Student Clusters in Functional Programming AssignmentsProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569882(750-756)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569882
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Teaching the art of functional programming using automated grading (experience report)
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
      2. Student assessment
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
        Functional languages

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 3, Issue ICFP

August 2019

1054 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3352468

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Copyright © 2019 Owner/Author.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 26 July 2019

Published in PACMPL Volume 3, Issue ICFP

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Cited By

Messer MBrown NKölling MShi M(2024)Automated Grading and Feedback Tools for Programming Education: A Systematic ReviewACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/363651524:1(1-43)Online publication date: 19-Feb-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636515
Rocha HCosta ETedesco P(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
https://doi.org/10.23919/CISTI58278.2023.10212000
Geng CXu WXu YPientka BSi XDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)Identifying Different Student Clusters in Functional Programming AssignmentsProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569882(750-756)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569882
Mishra DEdwards SDoyle MStephenson BDorn BSoh LBattestilli L(2023)The Programming Exercise Markup LanguageProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569734(395-401)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3545945.3569734
Joyse Barbosa Rocha Hde Barros Costa ECabral de Azevedo Restelli Tedesco P(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
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343309
Kappelmann KRädle JStevens L(2022)Engaging, Large-Scale Functional Programming Education in Physical and Virtual SpaceElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.363.6363(93-113)Online publication date: 26-Jul-2022
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.363.6
dos Santos Montagner INakayama Kurauchi A(2022)Learning professional software development skills by contributing to Open Source projects2022 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962744(1-7)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE56618.2022.9962744
Ceci ATavante HPientka BSi XSherriff MMerkle LCutter PMonge ASheard J(2021)Data Collection for the Learn-OCaml Programming PlatformProceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3408877.3439579(1341-1341)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3408877.3439579

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