Good practices to influence engagement and learning outcomes on a traditional introductory programming course

ABSTRACT

There have been many successful examples of new methodological approaches developed to help students in computer programming courses. Of these approaches, the peer assessment mechanism could be useful in providing students with opportunities to learn from one another, improve their learning experience and reach efficient learning outcomes. The paper presents and analyses an improved system based on the received evaluations of a previously developed web-based programming-assisted environment. This system automatically manages the peer code review process and delivers feedback to peers in a manner that favours the incremental learning of the concepts presented throughout the course. The experimental results are focussed on the impact of this system on students’ programming competence, time management capabilities and student engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Peer-assessment
• computer programming courses
• time management capabilities
• student engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Antonella Carbonaro is a confirmed Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Computer Science Degree Course of the University of Bologna. In 1997 she finished her Ph.D. studies at University of Ancona on Artificial Intelligent System. From 1997 to 1999 she received, beside the Computer Science degree Course of the University of Bologna, a research fellowship with theme of search “Artificial Intelligence”. Since 2000 she is first assistant professor and then associate professor. Her current research interests concern semantic web technologies, data representation and personalised learning environment.

ORCID

Antonella Carbonaro http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3890-4852