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- abstractMarch 2024
The Future of the Error Message: Comparing Large Language Models and Novice Programmer Effectiveness in Fixing Errors
SIGCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2March 2024, Page 1881https://doi.org/10.1145/3626253.3635404Research on enhancing error message presentation is of great interest to teachers and developers alike because improving Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) increases early student retention and efficiency at all levels with more effective ...
- research-articleMarch 2024
Writing Between the Lines: How Novices Construct Java Programs
SIGCSE 2024: Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1March 2024, Pages 165–171https://doi.org/10.1145/3626252.3630968Novices frequently learn to program using text-based programming, in languages such as Java. Programs can be constructed in a variety of different ways. Novices may write them sequentially, one line after another, or they may use top-down design to write ...
- abstractAugust 2022
Why Data Scientists Prefer Glassbox Machine Learning: Algorithms, Differential Privacy, Editing and Bias Mitigation
KDD '22: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data MiningAugust 2022, Pages 4776–4777https://doi.org/10.1145/3534678.3542627Recent research has shown that interpretable machine learning models can be just as accurate as blackbox learning methods on tabular datasets. In this tutorial we will walk you through leading open source tools for glassbox learning, and show how ...
- abstractMarch 2022
Getting Started with Source Code Analysis for Programming Education Research
SIGCSE 2022: Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2March 2022, Page 1195https://doi.org/10.1145/3478432.3499166Interesting ideas for computing education research often involve analysis of source code written by beginners. The process is often difficult to carry out: data must be collected from learners and then the code must be analysed. This can be daunting and ...
- research-articleFebruary 2022
Sympathy for the (Novice) Developer: Programming Activity When Compilation Mechanism Varies
SIGCSE 2022: Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - Volume 1February 2022, Pages 962–968https://doi.org/10.1145/3478431.3499347In this work we investigate compilation behavior and error resolution time of thousands of novice programmers using two different versions of the BlueJ pedagogical Java programming environment. The two versions feature different compilation and error ...
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- posterJune 2021
Exploring Novice Programming Behavior over Time
ITiCSE '21: Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 2June 2021, Page 651https://doi.org/10.1145/3456565.3460063This work focuses on the effect that programming time has on novice programmers' interaction with two versions of the BlueJ programming environment that differ in compilation mechanism and error message presentation. We utilize programming process data ...
- research-articleMarch 2021
Usage of the Java Language by Novices over Time: Implications for Tool and Language Design
SIGCSE '21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationMarch 2021, Pages 328–334https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3432408Java is a popular programming language for teaching at university level. BlueJ is a popular tool for teaching Java to beginners. We provide several analyses of Java use in BlueJ to answer three questions: what use is made of different parts of Java by ...
- research-articleJanuary 2021
Optimization of Stochastic Blackboxes with Adaptive Precision
SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), Volume 31, Issue 42021, Pages 3127–3156https://doi.org/10.1137/20M1318894In derivative-free and blackbox optimization, the objective function is often evaluated through the execution of a computer program seen as a blackbox. It can be stochastic, in the sense that an additive centered Gaussian random noise is present in the ...
- abstractFebruary 2020
Blackbox Mini - Getting Started With Blackbox Data Analysis
SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFebruary 2020, Page 1387https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3367006The Blackbox project collects programming activity data from users of BlueJ, a Java IDE aimed at novices. The Blackbox data set has grown very large, with several terabytes of source code data. This is a double-edged sword; it provides large amounts of ...
- research-articleFebruary 2020
The Effects of Compilation Mechanisms and Error Message Presentation on Novice Programmer Behavior
SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFebruary 2020, Pages 759–765https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366882It is generally accepted that learning to program could be easier for many students. One of the most important components of this experience is the programming environment. Novices learn in a variety of environments, from basic command-line interfaces ...
- research-articleJuly 2019
Native Language's Effect on Java Compiler Errors
ICER '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education ResearchJuly 2019, Pages 249–257https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3339423Novice student compilation behaviors are well documented by prior research, but those findings are derived from instructional contexts that are largely in English-dominant locales. Speakers of languages other than English face unique challenges while ...
- research-articleAugust 2018
Blackbox, Five Years On: An Evaluation of a Large-scale Programming Data Collection Project
ICER '18: Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on International Computing Education ResearchAugust 2018, Pages 196–204https://doi.org/10.1145/3230977.3230991The Blackbox project has been collecting programming activity data from users of BlueJ (a novice-targeted Java development environment) for nearly five years. The resulting dataset of more than two terabytes of data has been made available to interested ...
- research-articleFebruary 2018
Fix the First, Ignore the Rest: Dealing with Multiple Compiler Error Messages
SIGCSE '18: Proceedings of the 49th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFebruary 2018, Pages 634–639https://doi.org/10.1145/3159450.3159453In order to help students learning to develop computer programs, several computing education researchers have analyzed the compiler error messages generated by novices' attempts to compile their programs. The goal is to help students diagnose the errors ...
- research-articleMay 2017
Novice Java Programming Mistakes: Large-Scale Data vs. Educator Beliefs
ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), Volume 17, Issue 2Article No.: 7, Pages 1–21https://doi.org/10.1145/2994154Teaching is the process of conveying knowledge and skills to learners. It involves preventing misunderstandings or correcting misconceptions that learners have acquired. Thus, effective teaching relies on solid knowledge of the discipline, but also a ...
- abstractFebruary 2016
Researching Programming Education with Blackbox (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '16: Proceedings of the 47th ACM Technical Symposium on Computing Science EducationFebruary 2016, Page 702https://doi.org/10.1145/2839509.2850479The Blackbox project collects data from opted-in users of the BlueJ beginners' Java IDE. This data includes source code edits, compilation results, and use of various tools within BlueJ (such as the debugger). Interested researchers may sign up either ...
- research-articleAugust 2015
Aggregate Compilation Behavior: Findings and Implications from 27,698 Users
ICER '15: Proceedings of the eleventh annual International Conference on International Computing Education ResearchJuly 2015, Pages 131–139https://doi.org/10.1145/2787622.2787718The error quotient (EQ) was first reported in 2006 as a behavioral measure of novice programmers. The EQ scores how well students deal with correcting syntax errors (or not) in their programs. The original studies were carried out on data collected ...
- posterFebruary 2015
Data Mining: Building Better Bug Messages (Abstract Only)
SIGCSE '15: Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFebruary 2015, Page 715https://doi.org/10.1145/2676723.2693628An important and challenging part of the computer science curriculum is learning to program. A source of aggravation when learning this skill is finding syntactic mistakes in the code commonly referred to as bugs. This learning process is frustrating ...
- research-articleFebruary 2015
37 Million Compilations: Investigating Novice Programming Mistakes in Large-Scale Student Data
SIGCSE '15: Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science EducationFebruary 2015, Pages 522–527https://doi.org/10.1145/2676723.2677258Previous investigations of student errors have typically focused on samples of hundreds of students at individual institutions. This work uses a year's worth of compilation events from over 250,000 students all over the world, taken from the large ...
- technical-noteMarch 2014
Introduction to analysing the BlueJ blackbox data (abstract only)
SIGCSE '14: Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science educationMarch 2014, Page 748https://doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2539012The Blackbox project, launched in 2013, collects large amounts of data about beginner student behaviour in the BlueJ IDE. In this this workshop, we will introduce researchers to the Blackbox data and show them how to get started with analyzing it to ...