Pilot on programming courses

Overview

Currently different Aalto programming courses apply partially different learning and teaching methods, and use different tools, e.g. for automatic online checking of the exercises (or no automatic checking at all). During the pilot the tools will be harmonised, for example to use common user interface for students and teachers. However, different courses still have their specific needs, especially on the automatic checking technology.

C course goals: The C (and C++) programming courses already have material in the network and use automatic checking, but the network material is fairly static and text based. Also for student evaluation the course still uses paper exams (yuck!). The undersigned still believes that controlled individual assessment is needed to 1) motivate (strategically oriented) students to actually learn the topics themselves; 2) verify the students’ individual learning. It would be easy to submit automatically checked exercises on behalf of someone else (and this is known to occasionally happen). The top goals are therefore

1. Improve visualisation and functionality of the course material to better support learning
2. Improve performance of the online checking system (currently less than good)
3. Integrate the checking system with other Aalto systems (other programming courses, MyCourses, grading tools, perhaps eventually even Oodi)
4. (If possible) Develop online assessment/exam system to replace paper exams. This is not only about technology, but requires space arrangements for some sort of “exam aquarium” where exercises can be done in controlled environment.

Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) course goals: The course already has an eBook in English and exercises that do automatic checking. We are planning to publish the course handouts (pruju) as open courseware and include many interactive components in there just like in this eBook. This new material will be used in the course next fall in flipped class manner. The top goals are therefore

1. Improve visualisation and functionality of the course material to better support learning
2. Improve performance of the online learning environment (e.g. unit tests for Eclipse, submission system, etc.)
3. Integrate the eBook into the Finnish material (pruju) in order to avoid translating the whole book in Finnish