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Using learning analytics in the Amazonas: understanding students’ behaviour in introductory programming

Pereira, Filipe Dwan; Oliveira, Elaine H.T.; Oliveira, David; Cristea, Alexandra I.; Carvalho, Leandro S.G.; Fonseca, Samuel; Toda, Armando; Isotani, Seiji

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Authors

Filipe Dwan Pereira

Elaine H.T. Oliveira

David Oliveira

Leandro S.G. Carvalho

Samuel Fonseca

Armando Toda

Seiji Isotani



Abstract

Tools for automatic grading programming assignments, also known as Online Judges, have been widely used to support computer science (CS) courses. Nevertheless, few studies have used these tools to acquire and analyse interaction data to better understand the students’ performance and behaviours, often due to data availability or inadequate granularity. To address this problem, we propose an Online Judge called CodeBench, which allows for fine‐grained data collection of student interactions, at the level of, eg, keystrokes, number of submissions, and grades. We deployed CodeBench for 3 years (2016–18) and collected data from 2058 students from 16 introductory computer science (CS1) courses, on which we have carried out fine‐grained learning analytics, towards early detection of effective/ineffective behaviours regarding learning CS concepts. Results extract clear behavioural classes of CS1 students, significantly differentiated both semantically and statistically, enabling us to better explain how student behaviours during programming have influenced learning outcomes. Finally, we also identify behaviours that can guide novice students to improve their learning performance, which can be used for interventions. We believe this work is a step forward towards enhancing Online Judges and helping teachers and students improve their CS1 teaching/learning practices.

Citation

Pereira, F. D., Oliveira, E. H., Oliveira, D., Cristea, A. I., Carvalho, L. S., Fonseca, S., …Isotani, S. (2020). Using learning analytics in the Amazonas: understanding students’ behaviour in introductory programming. British Journal of Educational Technology, 51(4), 955-972. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12953

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 18, 2020
Online Publication Date May 20, 2020
Publication Date Jul 31, 2020
Deposit Date Apr 21, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal British Journal of Educational Technology
Print ISSN 0007-1013
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 51
Issue 4
Pages 955-972
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12953

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Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [FULL CITE],Pereira, Filipe Dwan, Oliveira, Elaine H. T., Oliveira, David, Cristea, Alexandra I., Carvalho, Leandro S. G., Fonseca, Samuel, Toda, Armando & Isotani, Seiji (2020). Using learning analytics in the Amazonas: understanding students’ behaviour in introductory programming. British Journal of Educational Technology 51(4): 955-972 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12953. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.





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