This article describes the development of an application for the grading and provision of feedback on educational processes. The too, named EduZinc, enables instructors to go through the complete p...

EduZinc: a tool for the creation and assessment of student learning activities in complex open, online, and flexible learning environments

Online platforms to learn programming are very popular nowadays. These platforms must automatically assess codes submitted by the learners and must provide good quality feedbacks in order to support their learning. Classical techniques to produce useful feedbacks include using unit testing frameworks to perform systematic functional tests of the submitted codes or using code quality assessment tools. This paper explores how to automatically identify error classes by clustering a set of submitted codes, using code plagiarism detection tools to measure the similarity between the codes. The proposed approach and analysis framework are presented in the paper, along with a first experiment using the Code Hunt dataset.

Automatic programming error class identification with code plagiarism-based clustering

It is important for a future computer science engineer or scientist to master algorithm design and to know how to optimise algorithms to solve real-world problems. Most programming and IT contests require their contestants to design algorithms to solve problems and to optimise their code to get the best temporal and spatial performances. This paper presents training materials built from contest tasks to teach and learn how to design algorithms that solve concrete and contextualised problems. The first learning modules will be built thanks to a pedagogical device that will be deployed during the 2017–2018 academic year at ECAM in the frame of the LADO project. All the produced materials will be open sourced and available in English.

Learning and Teaching Algorithm Design and Optimisation Using Contests Tasks

Nowadays, teaching and learning computer science is done at various ages, for several topics and for different reasons. Depending on the country, it can start from the primary school and it finishes at the higher education level, or even later if we take continuing education into consideration. Topics to be learned can be as simple as binary representation or basic programming concepts that can be taught to children to introduce them to computer science. It is also possible to teach and learn advanced data structures or algorithms optimisation, which are interesting skills for Olympiad in Informatics contestants, for example. Recently, there is a prominent number of websites and applications that have been created to help the teaching and learning of many informatics concepts. This paper presents a platform that has been designed to browse a database of resources that can be used to teach or to learn computer science. This digital library contains freely accessible resources and can be searched efficiently thanks to the proposed structure for its content. It has been designed to maximise the user’s experience and to fit modern models of digital libraries. For each resource, a detailed information sheet has been produced, containing among other things pedagogical information to help teachers and learners use the resources as best as possible. This platform can also be used to train candidates to Olympiad in Informatics and other related and similar competitions.

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TLCS: A Digital Library with Resources to Teach and Learn Computer Science

Aim/Purpose The aims of this study were to investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks and to compare manual assessment with automatic assessment in terms of the effect of the different assessment methods on the marks of the students. Background Manual assessment of programs written by students can be tedious. The assistance of automatic assessment methods might possibly assist in reducing the assessment burden, but there may be drawbacks diminishing the benefits of applying automatic assessment. The paper reports on the experience of a lecturer trying to introduce automated grading. Students’ solutions to a practical Java programming test were assessed both manually and automatically and the lecturer tied the experience to the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). Methodology The participants were 226 first-year students registered for a Java programming course. Of the tests the participants submitted, 214 were assessed both manually and automatically. Various statistical methods were used to compare the manual assessment of student’s solutions with the automatic assessment of the same solutions. A detailed investigation of reasons for differences was also carried out. A further data collection method was the lecturer’s reflection on the feasibility of automatic assessment of programming tasks based on the UTAUT. Contribution This study enhances the knowledge regarding benefits and drawbacks of automatic assessment of students’ programming tasks. The research contributes to the UTAUT by applying it in a context where it has hardly been used. Furthermore, the study is a confirmation of previous work stating that automatic assessment may be less reliable for students with lower marks, but more trustworthy for the high achieving students. Automatic Assessment of Programs 202 Findings An automatic assessment tool verifying functional correctness might be feasible for assessment of programs written during practical lab sessions but could be less useful for practical tests and exams where functional, conceptual and structural correctness should be evaluated. In addition, the researchers found that automatic assessment seemed to be more suitable for assessing high achieving students. Recommendations for Practitioners This paper makes it clear that lecturers should know what assessment goals they want to achieve. The appropriate method of assessment should be chosen wisely. In addition, practitioners should be aware of the drawbacks of automatic assessment before choosing it. Recommendation for Researchers This work serves as an example of how researchers can apply the UTAUT theory when conducting qualitative research in different contexts. Impact on Society The study would be of interest to lecturers considering automated assessment. The two assessments used in the study are typical of the way grading takes place in practice and may help lecturers understand what could happen if they switch from manual to automatic assessment. Future Research Investigate the feasibility of automatic assessment of students’ programming tasks in a practical lab environment while accounting for structural, functional and conceptual assessment goals.

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Investigating the Feasibility of Automatic Assessment of Programming Tasks

Automatic assessment of code to support education is an important feature of many programming learning platforms. Unit testing frameworks can be used to perform a systematic functional test of codes; they are mainly used by developers. Competition graders can be used to safely execute code in sandboxed environments; they are mainly used for programming contests. This paper proposes a platform combining the advantages of unit testing and competition graders to provide a unit testing-based grader. The proposed platform assesses codes and produces relevant and "intelligent" feedbacks to support learning. The paper presents the architecture of the platform and how the unit tests are designed.

Pythia reloaded: an intelligent unit testing-based code grader for education

Ce travail s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un projet de collaboration entre l’UCL/ pôle génie civil et environnemental et le MIT (Boston) visant à prouver la faisabilité de la construction automatisée d’ouvrages maçonnés à l’aide de robots volants, plus communément appelés drones. En particulier, ce travail concerne le développement d’une méthode de guidage et de positionnement d’un drone à l’aide de capteurs lasers embarqués pointant sur des écrans placés autour de la zone dans laquelle le drone doit déposer les blocs de maçonnerie. Document type : Contribution à ouvrage collectif (Book Chapter) Référence bibliographique Nehri, Nabil ; Paques, Alexis ; Marchand, Cédric ; Goessens, Sébastien ; Mueller, C. ; et. al. Système de guidage d’un drone à l’aide de capteurs embarqués, destiné à la construction automatique d’ouvrages en maçonnerie.  In: Secrétariat Général de l’Enseignement Catholique asbl, Revue scientifique des ISILF,  2017, p. 1-17

Alexis Paques

Papers

Pythia reloaded: an intelligent unit testing-based code grader for education

Système de guidage d’un drone à l’aide de capteurs embarqués, destiné à la construction automatique d’ouvrages en maçonnerie