Teaching Programming to Large Student Groups through Test Driven Development - Comparing Established Methods with Teaching based on Test Driven Development

Morten Goodwin, Tom Drange

2016

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for teaching programming in large university classes based on test driven development (TDD) methods. The approach aims at giving the students an industry-like environment already in their education and introduces full automation and feedback programming classes through unit testing. The focus for this paper is to compare the novel approach with existing teaching methods. It does so by comparing introduction to programming classes in two institutions. One university ran a TDD teaching process with fully automated assessments and feedback, while the other ran a more traditional on-line environment with manual assessments and feedback. The TDD approach has clear advantages when it comes to learning programming as it is done in the industry, including being familiar with tools and approaches used. However, it lacks ways of dealing with cheating and stimulating creativity in student submissions.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Goodwin M. and Drange T. (2016). Teaching Programming to Large Student Groups through Test Driven Development - Comparing Established Methods with Teaching based on Test Driven Development . In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-179-3, pages 281-288. DOI: 10.5220/0005789502810288


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu16,
author={Morten Goodwin and Tom Drange},
title={Teaching Programming to Large Student Groups through Test Driven Development - Comparing Established Methods with Teaching based on Test Driven Development},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2016},
pages={281-288},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005789502810288},
isbn={978-989-758-179-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Teaching Programming to Large Student Groups through Test Driven Development - Comparing Established Methods with Teaching based on Test Driven Development
SN - 978-989-758-179-3
AU - Goodwin M.
AU - Drange T.
PY - 2016
SP - 281
EP - 288
DO - 10.5220/0005789502810288