Improving Student Computer Programming Understanding and Engagement through Computer-Monitored Problem-Solving Discussions

该项目的意义和重要性在于它侧重于解决学生在早期计算机编程课程中的动机方面和概念性学习障碍。在这些课程中，由于许多面向计算机科学的学生在大学生涯中停滞不前，这些概念变得困难起来。该项目将在一个高度互动的聊天室环境中应用现代集体练习的想法，在这个环境中，学生将负责相互帮助，并对个人学习负责。该项目的系统将记录下来，然后将文本分析应用于学生小组互动，为教师总结学生小组在社交和解决问题方面的运作情况。该项目的目标和范围是开发新的协作任务，以锻炼Java编程语言的分析和概念技能。同时，该项目将研究学生如何参与练习，以及如何提高学生的积极性。这些研究为文本分类器技术的进一步发展奠定了基础，以监测认知、情感和语言现象，这些现象表明学生积极讨论和学习。一些衡量标准，例如，学生是否表现出热情，应该适用于其他各种教学领域。该项目将评估这种干预措施在保持学生积极性方面的成功程度，无论是在个人练习中还是在他们的学生职业生涯中。

The project's significance and importance lie in its focus on addressing both the motivational aspects and conceptual learning barriers for students in early computer programming courses. In these courses the concepts become difficult with many computer science oriented students stalling in their college career. The project will apply modern ideas of group exercises in a highly interactive chat-room environment, where students will be accountable for helping each other and individually accountable for learning. The project's system will record and will then apply text analytics to student group interactions, summarizing for the instructor how well the student groups are functioning both socially and in problem solving. The goals and scope of the project are to develop new collaboration assignments that exercise Java programming language analytic and conceptual skills. At the same time the project will study how students engage with the exercises and how student enthusiasm can be increased. These studies underlie further development of the text classifier technology to monitor for cognitive, affective, and linguistic phenomena that are indicative of enthusiastic students actively discussing and learning. Some measurements, for example, whether the students evince enthusiasm, should be usable in a wide variety of other pedagogical domains. The project will assess how well this intervention succeeds in keeping students motivated, both within individual exercises and in their student careers.