A QA cycle for teaching programming. A mechanism for automatically posing questions corresponding to learner's skill
Hideki Nakajima, Naohisa Takahashi, Yoshihide Hosokawa · Systems and Computers in Japan · 2006
Abstract This paper proposes a QA cycle execution system for programming education matched to the learner's skill. The proposed system has the following features. (1) The language describing the QA cycle (EDML: Exercise Design Markup Language) is created. EDML is a language with the following functions. Various questions with the same difficulty and different content can be automatically generated. The answer evaluation environment and the selection of questions matched to the skill are described in a unified text for iterative learning matched to the learner's skill. (2) A method is established in which a learning system can easily be constructed by using an existing mail system. With the proposed approach, a remote learning system can be created without implementing functions for network security, generation of temporary logs, or program buffering in case of overload, which are essential elements of a remote learning system. This paper also describes the construction of a prototype of the proposed system. The proposed system was applied to a Pascal programming course for college freshman, and the results are described herein. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 38(1): 28–40, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/scj.20471