InsProg: Supporting Teaching Through Visual Analysis of Students’ Programming Processes
Hongyan Zhong, Jun Niu, Junjie Li · 2024
Teachers commonly assess students’ knowledge mastery through their submitted programming assignments. However, programming is a dynamic process that involves editing and debugging, and this evaluation may overlook the actual abilities exhibited by students during the programming process. Therefore, understanding students’ programming processes becomes crucial for teachers to grasp their programming abilities. While previous studies have focused on students’ programming processes, they predominantly concentrate on the evolution of source code content for individual student, neglecting a comprehensive analysis and visual representation of the entire programming pathway, including the debugging process. In this paper, we propose InsProg, a novel visual analysis system for programming process. By collecting students’ keystroke data and source code snapshots, InsProg not only enables teachers to trace students’ complete programming processes, but it also provides insights into their editing progress and the correctness of their solutions in two-dimensional coordinates. Preliminary experimental results demonstrate that InsProg effectively visualizes students’ programming processes, facilitating teachers’ efficient assessment of students’ programming abilities. This offers valuable support for teachers in assisting with programming instruction.