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Teaching how to program using automated assessment and functional glossy games (experience report)

Authors:

José Bacelar Almeida,

José ProençaAuthors Info & Claims

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, Volume 2, Issue ICFP

Article No.: 82, Pages 1 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/3236777

Published: 30 July 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Our department has long been an advocate of the functional-first school of programming and has been teaching Haskell as a first language in introductory programming course units for 20 years. Although the functional style is largely beneficial, it needs to be taught in an enthusiastic and captivating way to fight the unusually high computer science drop-out rates and appeal to a heterogeneous population of students.

This paper reports our experience of restructuring, over the last 5 years, an introductory laboratory course unit that trains hands-on functional programming concepts and good software development practices. We have been using game programming to keep students motivated, and following a methodology that hinges on test-driven development and continuous bidirectional feedback.

We summarise successes and missteps, and how we have learned from our experience to arrive at a model for comprehensive and interactive functional game programming assignments and a general functionally-powered automated assessment platform, that together provide a more engaging learning experience for students. In our experience, we have been able to teach increasingly more advanced functional programming concepts while improving student engagement.

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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
Macedo JRodrigues EViera MSaraiva J(2024)Zipper-based embedding of strategic attribute grammarsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.111975211(111975)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.111975
Macedo JRodrigues EViera MSaraiva JBrady EPalsberg J(2023)Efficient Embedding of Strategic Attribute Grammars via MemoizationProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation10.1145/3571786.3573019(41-54)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571786.3573019
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Teaching how to program using automated assessment and functional glossy games (experience report)
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
      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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Published In

cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages

Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages Volume 2, Issue ICFP

September 2018

1133 pages

EISSN:2475-1421

DOI:10.1145/3243631

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Copyright © 2018 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: 30 July 2018

Published in PACMPL Volume 2, 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
Macedo JRodrigues EViera MSaraiva J(2024)Zipper-based embedding of strategic attribute grammarsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2024.111975211(111975)Online publication date: May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2024.111975
Macedo JRodrigues EViera MSaraiva JBrady EPalsberg J(2023)Efficient Embedding of Strategic Attribute Grammars via MemoizationProceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation10.1145/3571786.3573019(41-54)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3571786.3573019
Soll M(2023)What Exactly is a Laboratory in Computer Science?2023 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON54358.2023.10125259(1-9)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON54358.2023.10125259
Fan ZGu SLi PLiu X(2023)Exploration of Online-offline Blended Teaching and Assessing in University Programming Courses2023 5th International Conference on Computer Science and Technologies in Education (CSTE)10.1109/CSTE59648.2023.00027(112-116)Online publication date: Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CSTE59648.2023.00027
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
Macedo JViera MSaraiva J(2022)Zipping Strategies and Attribute GrammarsFunctional and Logic Programming10.1007/978-3-030-99461-7_7(112-132)Online publication date: 3-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99461-7_7
Hwang MSantolucito MSchulte CBecker BDivitini MBarendsen E(2021)cardComposer: A Functional Programming Card GameProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3456565.3460029(635-636)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3456565.3460029
Pacheco HMacedo N(2020)ROSY: An elegant language to teach the pure reactive nature of robot programming2020 Fourth IEEE International Conference on Robotic Computing (IRC)10.1109/IRC.2020.00045(240-247)Online publication date: Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/IRC.2020.00045

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