An adaptive approach to provide feedback for students in programming problem solving

Abstract

This paper describes an approach to help students involved in a Programming Tutoring System, providing them with feedback during the coding problem-solving activities. It provides feedback for students during the coding, helping them to fix mistakes and how to take the next steps to complete the solution. This way, the student does not need to complete and submit a solution to get feedback from the system. The approach uses three feedback resources: Videos, text hints, and flowcharts. We conducted an experiment involving 34 students from a programming introduction course. Preliminary results indicated a positive impact on the students learning. Our results also suggested that we can provide valuable feedback to students with difficult to complete a solution.