2 Search Results for "Santos, André L."


Document
Invited Talk
Shifting programming education assessment from exercise outputs toward deeper comprehension (Invited Talk)

Authors: André L. Santos

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 112, 4th International Computer Programming Education Conference (ICPEC 2023)


Abstract
Practice and assessment in introductory programming courses are typically centered on problems that require students to write code to produce specific outputs. While these exercises are necessary and useful for providing practice and mastering syntax, their solutions may not effectively measure the learners’ real understanding of programming concepts. Misconceptions and knowledge gaps may be hidden under an exercise solution with correct outputs. Furthermore, obtaining answers has never been so easy in the present era of chatbots, so why should we care (much) about the solutions? Learning a skill is a process that requires iteration and failing, where feedback is of utmost importance. A programming exercise is a means to build up reasoning capabilities and strategic knowledge, not an end in itself. It is the process that matters most, not the exercise solution. Assessing if the learning process was effective requires much more than checking outputs. I advocate that introductory programming learning could benefit from placing more emphasis on assessing learner comprehension, over checking outputs. Does this mean that we should not check if the results are correct? Certainly not, but a significant part of the learning process would focus on assessing and providing feedback regarding the comprehension of the written code and underlying concepts. Automated assessment systems would reflect this shift by comprising evaluation items for such a purpose, with adequate feedback. Achieving this involves numerous challenges and innovative technical approaches. In this talk, I present an overview of past and future work on tools that integrate code comprehension aspects in the process of solving programming exercises.

Cite as

André L. Santos. Shifting programming education assessment from exercise outputs toward deeper comprehension (Invited Talk). In 4th International Computer Programming Education Conference (ICPEC 2023). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 112, pp. 1:1-1:5, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)


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@InProceedings{santos:OASIcs.ICPEC.2023.1,
  author =	{Santos, Andr\'{e} L.},
  title =	{{Shifting programming education assessment from exercise outputs toward deeper comprehension}},
  booktitle =	{4th International Computer Programming Education Conference (ICPEC 2023)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:5},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-290-7},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{112},
  editor =	{Peixoto de Queir\'{o}s, Ricardo Alexandre and Teixeira Pinto, M\'{a}rio Paulo},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.ICPEC.2023.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-184970},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.ICPEC.2023.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: Introductory programming, assessment, comprehension}
}
Document
Sprinter: A Didactic Linter for Structured Programming

Authors: Francisco Alfredo, André L. Santos, and Nuno Garrido

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 102, Third International Computer Programming Education Conference (ICPEC 2022)


Abstract
Code linters are tools for detecting improper uses of programming constructs and violations of style issues. Despite that professional linters are available for numerous languages, they are not targeted to introductory programming, given their prescriptive nature that does not take into consideration a didactic viewpoint of learning programming fundamentals. We present Sprinter, a didactic code linter for structured programming supporting Java whose novelty aspects are twofold: (a) providing formative feedback on code with comprehensive explanatory messages (rather then prescriptive); (b) capability of detecting some control-flow issues to a deeper extent than professional linters. We review Sprinter features against popular tools, namely IntelliJ IDEA and Sonarlint.

Cite as

Francisco Alfredo, André L. Santos, and Nuno Garrido. Sprinter: A Didactic Linter for Structured Programming. In Third International Computer Programming Education Conference (ICPEC 2022). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 102, pp. 2:1-2:8, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)


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@InProceedings{alfredo_et_al:OASIcs.ICPEC.2022.2,
  author =	{Alfredo, Francisco and Santos, Andr\'{e} L. and Garrido, Nuno},
  title =	{{Sprinter: A Didactic Linter for Structured Programming}},
  booktitle =	{Third International Computer Programming Education Conference (ICPEC 2022)},
  pages =	{2:1--2:8},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-229-7},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{102},
  editor =	{Sim\~{o}es, Alberto and Silva, Jo\~{a}o Carlos},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops-dev.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.ICPEC.2022.2},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-166063},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.ICPEC.2022.2},
  annote =	{Keywords: structured programming, code quality, code linter}
}
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