Using Spectrum-Based Fault Location and Heatmaps to Express Debugging Suggestions to Student Programmers
Bob Edmison, Stephen H. Edwards, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones · 2017
Automated grading systems are useful for conveying debugging feedback to students, but the manner in which this feedback is displayed can be problematic for students. Automated systems usually report failures in student code, whether it be the results of test case failures or runtime errors. However, since most students are not explicitly taught how to debug, many get stuck. They know the defects exist, but they don't have to experience to know how to find them. Much work has been done in software engineering research using automatic fault localization to programmatically locate bugs within a piece of code under test, as well as research into validating those detection models when applied to student code.