Research 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 ...

Novices 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 ...

Recent 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 ...

Interesting 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 ...

In 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 ...

This 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 ...

We look at the problem of blackbox polynomial identity testing (PIT) for the model of read-once oblivious algebraic branching programs (ROABP), where the number of variables is logarithmic to the input size of ROABP. We restrict width of ROABP to a ...$$$$$$

Java 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 ...

In 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 ...

The 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 ...

It 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 ...

Novice 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 ...

The 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 ...

In 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 ...

Teaching 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 ...

The 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 ...

The 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 ...

An 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 ...

Previous 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 ...

The 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 ...