RobotStudio: A Modular IDE-Based Holistic Approach to Teaching Language Engineering and Compilers Using Educational Robots

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Computer Science (31) This project incorporates the development, refinement and evaluation of a holistic approach of using educational robots to teach language engineering and compiler topics. An inexpensive, simple, yet capable robot controller serves as the target system. Students use a dedicated teaching IDE - RobotStudio to control robots and explore key language engineering concepts, including interplay of language features and system design, lexing and parsing, compiler intermediate representation, bytecode generation, program analysis and transformation, all with RobotStudio as a concrete and immediately accessible test bed. In addition, the modular and extensible architecture of RobotStudio allows students to build and integrate their projects as RobotStudio plugin modules and gain hands-on experience of how individual compiler components work together to form a working IDE system. Major activities in this project include (1) the design and development of the modular IDE-based teaching approach and supporting materials; (2) assessment of the effectiveness of teaching materials and determining if the approach improves student interests, retention and success rate in related courses; and (3) the refinement and dissemination of teaching materials and supporting software tools to facilitate further implementation of these exemplary practices.