Code Modification Problems for Multimedia Use in JavaScript-Based Web Client Programming

Abstract

Nowadays, JavaScript is commonly used with HTML and CSS to introduce dynamic behaviors of web pages in web application systems. JavaScript has become critical in web client programming. We have developed Programming Learning Assistant System (PLAS) as a self-learning platform of programming languages by novice students. PLAS offers vairous types of exercise problems for improving code reading and code writing skills. Previously, the code modification problem (CMP) was introduced as a new problem type in PLAS for self-study of web client programming. A CMP instance requests to modify the given source code to generate the web page shown by the screenshot, where the answer correctness is verified through string matching. Since a web page is made with library functions, to read and understand source codes using them will be effective. We have generated CMP instances for basic functions, and confirmed the effectiveness through applications to novice students. In this paper, as the next step of web client programming study, we present CMP for multimedia use. A camera or a video takes important roles in a web page. It is expected that students master how to use them in the source code. For evaluations, we generated 20 instances and assigned them to 51 novice university students in Japan and Indonesia, whose solution results confirmed the validity of the proposal.