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iSnap: Towards Intelligent Tutoring in Novice Programming Environments

Published: 08 March 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Programming environments intentionally designed to support novices have become increasingly popular, and growing research supports their efficacy. While these environments offer features to engage students and reduce the burden of syntax errors, they currently offer little support to students who get stuck and need expert assistance. Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) are computer systems designed to play this role, helping and guiding students to achieve better learning outcomes. We present iSnap, an extension to the Snap programming environment which adds some key features of ITSs, including detailed logging and automatically generated hints. We share results from a pilot study of iSnap, indicating that students are generally willing to use hints and that hints can create positive outcomes. We also highlight some key challenges encountered in the pilot study and discuss their implications for future work.

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  • (2024)One Step at a Time: Combining LLMs and Static Analysis to Generate Next-Step Hints for Programming TasksProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699556(1-12)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
March 2017
838 pages
ISBN:9781450346986
DOI:10.1145/3017680
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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Published: 08 March 2017

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Author Tags

  1. data-driven
  2. hints
  3. intelligent tutoring systems
  4. logging
  5. novice programming
  6. snap

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SIGCSE '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 105 of 348 submissions, 30%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 1,595 of 4,542 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Using Permutation Tests to Identify Statistically Sound and Nonredundant Sequential Patterns in Educational Event SequencesJournal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics10.3102/10769986241248772Online publication date: 9-May-2024
  • (2024)Bringing Industry-Grade Code Quality and Practices into Software Engineering Education (Doctoral Consortium)Proceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699571(1-2)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
  • (2024)One Step at a Time: Combining LLMs and Static Analysis to Generate Next-Step Hints for Programming TasksProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699556(1-12)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
  • (2024)"Anything That Can Be Streamlined Would Be Great": Validating Elementary School Teachers’ Preferences for a Block-Based Programming Teaching Augmentation SystemProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699539(1-9)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
  • (2024)Navigating Compiler Errors with AI Assistance - A Study of GPT Hints in an Introductory Programming CourseProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653608(94-100)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
  • (2024)The Effects of Generative AI on Computing Students’ Help-Seeking PreferencesProceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3636243.3636248(39-48)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
  • (2024)Scaffolding Novices: Analyzing When and How Parsons Problems Impact Novice Programming in an Integrated Science AssignmentProceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 110.1145/3632620.3671110(42-54)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2024
  • (2024)Exploring How Multiple Levels of GPT-Generated Programming Hints Support or Disappoint NovicesExtended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613905.3650937(1-10)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)NuzzleBug: Debugging Block-Based Programs in ScratchProceedings of the IEEE/ACM 46th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3597503.3623331(1-13)Online publication date: 20-May-2024
  • (2024)Enhancing Python Learning with PyTutor: Efficacy of a ChatGPT-Based Intelligent Tutoring System in Programming EducationComputers and Education: Artificial Intelligence10.1016/j.caeai.2024.100309(100309)Online publication date: Sep-2024
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