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Towards improving programming habits to create better computer science course outcomes

Published: 01 July 2013 Publication History

Abstract

We examine a large dataset collected by the Marmoset system in a CS2 course. The dataset gives us a richly detailed portrait of student behavior because it combines automatically collected program snapshots with unit tests that can evaluate the correctness of all snapshots. We find that students who start earlier tend to earn better scores, which is consistent with the findings of other researchers. We also detail the overall work habits exhibited by students. Finally, we evaluate how students use release tokens, a novel mechanism that provides feedback to students without giving away the code for the test cases used for grading, and gives students an incentive to start coding earlier. We find that students seem to use their tokens quite effectively to acquire feedback and improve their project score, though we do not find much evidence suggesting that students start coding particularly early.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ITiCSE '13: Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
    July 2013
    384 pages
    ISBN:9781450320788
    DOI:10.1145/2462476
    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 ACM 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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    Published: 01 July 2013

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    Author Tags

    1. computer science education
    2. cs2
    3. novice programmers

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    ITiCSE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 51 of 161 submissions, 32%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)Identifying AI Generated Code with Parallel KNN Weight Outlier DetectionAdvanced Technologies and the University of the Future10.1007/978-3-031-71530-3_29(459-470)Online publication date: 17-Dec-2024
    • (2024)Work-In-Progress: Student Motivation on Gamification in Maintaining Programming EthicsTowards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education10.1007/978-3-031-53022-7_49(495-502)Online publication date: 7-Feb-2024
    • (2024)Inappropriate Benefits and Identification of ChatGPT Misuse in Programming Tests: A Controlled ExperimentTowards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education10.1007/978-3-031-51979-6_54(520-531)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2024
    • (2023)The Applications of Learning Analytics to Enhance Learning and Engagement in Introductory Programming InstructionPerspectives on Learning Analytics for Maximizing Student Outcomes10.4018/978-1-6684-9527-8.ch005(89-108)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Design of an Online Programming Platform and a Study on Learners’ Testing AbilityElectronics10.3390/electronics1222459612:22(4596)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Experiences with TA-Bot in CS1Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Global Computing Education Vol 110.1145/3576882.3617930(57-63)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2023
    • (2023)Dynamic Rate Limiting with TA-Bot in CS1Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3545947.3576276(1330-1330)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2023
    • (2023)Gamification to Help Inform Students About Programming Plagiarism and CollusionIEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2023.324389316:5(708-721)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2023
    • (2023)High School Student Perspective of Programming Plagiarism and Collusion2023 IEEE World Engineering Education Conference (EDUNINE)10.1109/EDUNINE57531.2023.10102902(1-5)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2023
    • (2023)Reporting less coincidental similarity to educate students about programming plagiarism and collusionComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2023.217806334:3(442-472)Online publication date: 21-Feb-2023
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