System Design and Evaluation of Programming Assessment Assignment System with Multiple Challenge Difficulties

Autor: Ting-Wei Kuo, 郭庭瑋
Rok vydání: 2019
Druh dokumentu: 學位論文 ; thesis
Popis: 107
Programming assignments are usually the way students learn to write programs. However, students have different knowledge levels. Too simple programming assignments may not stimulate the motivation of excellent students while too difficult programming assignments may ruin the motivation of low-achieving students. A programming assignment may be finished by different coding ways. It is similar to that a fun game often has different difficulty levels. A programming assignment with only one difficulty is difficult to measure the student's learning performance and meet the learning needs of students with different knowledge levels. This research develops a programming assignment assessment system with multiple challenge difficulties. The system enables teachers to assign a programming assignment with different coding restrictions to setup multiple challenge stages of different difficulty levels. The system also automatically assesses students’ programs. After a student submits a program for a assignment, the system compiles the student's program, compares the student’s and teacher's program output of specific input to evaluate the functional correctness of the program, and analyzes whether the student program code meets the coding restrictions. A challenge stage is finished when the student program correctly works and meets the coding restrictions of the challenge stage. Students can choose to challenge different difficulty stages of a programming assignment. The system allows students to challenge a stage multiple times until they passes all stages of different challenge difficulty levels. This study provides students with programming assignments with multiple challenge levels to meet students with different knowledge levels. The system also visualizes the students’ status of different difficulty levels, including passing rate and number of attempts, to help teachers understand students’ learning situation. This study also collected and analyzed students’ records on a programming course to submit their programming assignments through the programming assignment assessment system. The records include four programming assignments: leap year, prime number, rhombus, and sales statistics. Each assignment has three challenge levels of stages with different coding restrictions. The analysis results showed that programming assignment assessment system with multiple challenge difficulties met different learning needs of students with different knowledge levels. The study also asked students about their attitudes on the system through a questionnaire. The questionnaire results showed that the majority (69%) of the students indicated that the programming assessment system with multiple challenge difficulties was helpful for learning, and most (73%) students also indicated that the system can assess their learning outcomes.
Databáze: Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations