A Computer Platform to Increase Motivation in Programming

Students - PEP

Paula Correia Tavares

1,2

, Pedro Rangel Henriques

and Elsa Ferreira Gomes

1,3

Departamento de Informática, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Porto, Portugal

Centro Algoritmi & Departamento de Informática, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

INESC TEC, Portugal

Keywords: Motivation, Program Animation, Automatic Evaluation, Immediate Feedback.

Abstract: Motivate students is one of the biggest challenges that teachers have to face, in general and in particular in

programming courses. In this article two techniques, aimed at supporting the teaching of programming, are

discussed: program animation, and automatic evaluation of programs. Based on the combination of these

techniques and their currently available tools, we will describe two possible approaches to increase

motivation and improve the success. The conclusions of a first experiment conducted in the classroom will

be presented. PEP, a Web-based tool that implements one of the approaches proposed, will be introduced.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to Hundhausen and Douglas (2000) or

Proulx (2000) and many other authors, including the

various notes included in the Computer Science

Curricula of ACM/IEEE Guideline of 2013

(ACM/IEEE, 2013), confirmed by our professional

experience teaching courses on introduction to

computer programming, learn to program is an

arduous and complex task that raises many

challenges both to teachers and students. The lack of

motivation is one of the main reasons for the

students’ failure in programming courses (Santos

and Costa, 2006; Ramos, 2013). There are many

reasons for students to fail in learning programming

(Proulx, 2000) but the truth is that given the slightest

difficulty in understanding the statement, in

developing an algorithm or in the use of a

programming language, discourage learners and they

immediately give up. The project, in which the work

here reported is inserted, aims: to understand the

actual reasons for the difficulties which arise in the

process of teaching/learning computer programming

(discussed in (Tavares et al., 2015a)); to study

computer-supported approaches to combat this

failure (discussed in (Tavares et al., 2015b)); and to

suggest ways to combine those approaches to

increase the involvement of students in order to

overcome such difficulties (Tavares et al., 2016b). In

this paper, two techniques designed to support the

teaching of programming are presented in particular:

an older one, Program Animation that aims at taking

advantage of our visual acuity and the effect of

simulation to help understanding the algorithms and

programs; and another, more recent, which focus on

the use of systems for the Automatic Evaluation of

Programs to encourage students to go on working

providing them immediate feedback as soon as they

finish writing a program. These two topics will be

introduced briefly in section 3, aiming to support the

combined approaches that are proposed.

As mentioned above, the first objective of this

study focus on the difficulty intrinsic to the process

of teaching/learning programming and the

consequent failure. Thus, the project here discussed

is based on deep research study concerned with the

failure of learn to program and consequently in

developing proposals to increase motivation and

self-confidence of the students of introduction to

programming courses. Experimental studies at the

school level are essential for the development or use

of learning aid platforms. These tools will be

elements of teaching support to increase students'

ability to solve their problem. It is important to help

students in the transition from basic knowledge to

the comprehension of an algorithmic solution. The

goal is to get students to increase their ability to

practice programming regularly since the first day,

because we believe that in this way their success in

284

Tavares, P., Henriques, P. and Gomes, E.

A Computer Platform to Increase Motivation in Programming Students - PEP.

DOI: 10.5220/0006287402840291

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2017) - Volume 1, pages 284-291

ISBN: 978-989-758-239-4

school will increase. With regard to the resources

currently available for animation and automatic

evaluation of programs, we propose two alternative

approaches, described in section 4 and 5, in order to

expedite the process of teaching learning

programming. To check these two alternatives,

which are complementary, we conducted a

classroom test following the first approach,

AEv&Anim (summarized in section 4), and

developed a tool that materializes the second

approach, Anim&AEv (introduced and discussed in

section 6). In the next section, we present a short

survey about the basic subject underlying all our

work: Human Motivation.

2 MOTIVATION

As will be seen below, several theories have been

developed to explain the motivation from the

beginning of the history of psychology as a science.

Because it is a complex phenomenon, the subject has

been studied under different prisms (Williams and

Williams, 2011; Almeida, 2012). Some of them

claim that people are motivated by material rewards,

others by increasing their power and prestige in the

world, or by an interesting work, enriched

environments, recognition, or to be respected as an

individual. The fact is that humans in general have

very complex needs and desires. Motivation is one

of the keys to understand the human behaviour; it

acts on the thought, attention, emotion and action of

the Human Being, involving desire, effort, dreams

and hope (Williams and Williams, 2011; Almeida,

2012).

People are driven by very different factors, with

varied experiences and respective involvement. The

motivation leads to an action directed to a particular

goal, being regulated by biological or cognitive,

factors of each person. This action is enabled by the

needs, emotions, values, goals and personal

expectations, constituting a single intentional and

multifaceted phenomenon (Ryan and Deci, 2000).

According to Susana Ramos and colleague (2011),

there are theories of motivation that characterize the

individual as unique, but also try to analyse the

motivational phenomenon in its origins, evolution

and direction. Susana Ramos (2013) says that these

theories can be classified in Satisfaction Theories -

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, McGregor's Theory

X & Y, Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory - and

Theories of Progress - McClelland's Need Theory

and Vroom's expectancy theory.

Motivate students is one of the biggest

challenges that teachers have to face. In

programming is particularly difficult. For the teacher

play an important role in the learning process that

occurs in the classroom, the teacher would have to

have control over the external factors that influence

the behavior and involvement of students (Callahan,

2010). The level of motivation needed to involve

each student in a given task is determined by his

expectation for success and the value that the student

gives to that particular task. This theory suggests

that students can succeed if they dedicate with effort

and appreciate the activities in which they enrolled.

As Almeida (2012) stated, it’s important to

understand why students do not have motivation.

Many students attribute this problem to the behavior

of the teachers and the school in general, with the

expectation that they are active elements in their

learning. To verify this statement we designed a

questionnaire to survey students’ actual opinion; as

soon as we finish the analysis of the collected

answers we will publish the study. On the other

hand, the teacher assign the difficulties to the

students, with the expectation that they are

interested, auto-regulated, with energy to search for

knowledge, and responsible for their own

motivation. In this way, there is a conflict between

students’ expectations, and teachers, who expect a

general behavior distinct from that, manifested by

students (Almeida, 2012). The motivation is not only

a unitary phenomenon, which refers to the concept

of quantity. More than a lot of motivation, there are

variations in levels and motivational guidelines. In

this way, it is possible to ask what is the reason that

leads to a more or less motivated behavior. To

reason about motivational quality it is crucial to

consider the attitudes and goals that move people

towards an action. A good example is the motivation

that compels a student to do his homework. He can

do it without any curiosity or interest, simply

looking for the approval of the teacher or parent;

but, in the other way around, he can be motivated to

acquire new knowledge, or face new challenges

because he understands that his attitude brings

advantage and values; or he can still be motivated

because the knowledge acquired will give him a

position to attain better grades or a better social life.

In this example, the motivation may not vary

quantitatively, but its nature (the quality) can be

definitively distinct (Almeida, 2012). Distinguish

between quantitative and qualitative aspects of

motivation enlarges the view on it, as shown in

Figure 1.

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285

Figure 1: Factors involved in Motivation and its impact.

As can be seen in Figure 1, the motivation is

directly related to different factors ranging from,

physiological or emotional to intellectual and moral

factors.

Motivation is like an impulse, a feeling that

moves people to act to obtain their goals. Is what

makes the individuals do their best, do what they can

to get what they want.

According to the theory of self-determination,

the motivation can be intrinsic or extrinsic. The

intrinsic motivation does not need any external

factor. It derives from the student himself as the

dedication, competence, willingness and ability to

accomplish a task. Extrinsic motivation is the result

of external factors, such as the resources that the

student has, the rewards, and the environment where

it develops his tasks (Silva et al., 2014). Both work

together and the result will set the student's behavior,

as shown in the Figure 2.

Figure 2: Student/Teacher and Motivation.

According to Deci and Ryan (2000), motivation has

different degrees that in a continuum range from

demotivation (absence of motivation), to intrinsic

going through extrinsic motivation as depicted in

Figure 3 (adapted from (Deci and Ryan, 2000)).

Figure 3: Different degrees of Motivation.

The motivational and emotional factors have a direct

relation with the learning process. So, teachers have

to understand it to improve their role in the

classroom.

3 TECHNIQUES TO SUPPORT

THE TEACHING OF

PROGRAMMING

Among many techniques that have been studied to

help on teaching of programming, two that are

particularly interesting will be discussed in this

context: program animation, and automatic

evaluation of programs. For the sake of space, the

deep survey of these two areas, in which our work is

based, cannot be presented in detail. So, we

recommend the reading of (Tavares et al., 2015b).

3.1 Animation

The animation of an algorithm is a type of dynamic

visualization of its main abstractions. The

importance of this technique lies in the ability to

describe in a visible mode the essence or logic of an

algorithm (Pereira, 2002). The relevance of

algorithms animation in learning is justified because

many times the teacher resorts to the use of visual

representations to help students understand the

essence of algorithms, and the dynamic behavior of

programs. The animation can be composed of a set

of views more or less interactive. Ari Korhonen

(2003) explains how we should apply these

techniques in order to help students deal with

complex concepts. According to this author, from a

pedagogical point of view, it will be more interesting

to illustrate the logic and behavior of an algorithm

than the implementation details. It must be ensured

that this approach causes, at least, one level of

progress on learning. This methodology requires an

environment that provides feedback about student

achievements. This statement partially inspired our

proposal to be introduced later. In this context, there

are several tools in order to assist students on

learning programming, aimed at introducing basic

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algorithmic concepts through a familiar and pleasant

context. These animation tools were enumerated in a

previous paper (Tavares et al., 2015b). The detailed

study underlying that survey supported our choice.

So, in the proposal below we use the Jeliot tool

(Ben-Ari et al., 2011; 2002), an easy to use and

effective Java animator.

The animation becomes a facilitator of the

learning process since the presentation of abstract

concepts is more didactic, improving the quality of

the class support materials. It is clear that if the

student acquires a good knowledge basis, his

performance increases producing better results, and

better professional abilities (Santos and Costa,

2006).

3.2 Automatic Evaluation

It is very important to give students the opportunity

to practice and solve programming exercises by

themselves. However, the maximum effectiveness of

this approach requires the teacher's ability to review,

mark and grade each solution written by students.

Instant feedback is very important for the acquisition

of knowledge. Independently of the particular

learning strategy, it motivates students. However, in

large classes and with few lecture hours, this

approach is impractical. Individual feedback may

consume too much teacher´s time with risk that

students do not benefit from it in due time (Queirós

and Leal, 2015).

It is difficult to find a tool that incorporates all

the different advantages of the various existing tools.

To improve the learning of programming it is

important to be able to provide, at least, a

combination of a virtual environment and a

submission system. First it shall be provided support

for solving problems in an individual study, and

second, the environment shall support various

formats for the submission of questions and

evaluation. In other words, the teacher has to

provide to students an automatic evaluation system

able to return instant feedback.

New tools have emerged to facilitate and enable

their use in teaching activities, allowing students to

incorporate tests in their work. These tools, that have

been surveyed in the above referred paper (Tavares

et al., 2015b), increase the level of satisfaction and

motivation of students. According to teachers and

students, feedback should be provided and detailed

as quickly as possible. These tools do not replace the

teacher, but provide help and increase the value of

time in the classroom. Teachers should be able to

select the problems they intend to present to the

students according to their level of difficulty (Verdú

et al., 2011). Different teachers can adopt different

strategies, depending on their specific goals and

objectives of the course, especially of their own style

and preferences (Joy et al., 2005). So, students must

receive feedback at the right time to benefit from it.

In our proposal we adopted Mooshak tool (Leal and

Silva, 2008), a general purpose evaluation system

used in many universities in our country.

According to teachers and students, the

automatic feedback produced by those systems must

be improved; it should be faster and more detailed to

enable the improvement of the program quality,

getting a nicer solution when the original one is

poorly coded or too complex. This feedback is

obtained from the execution of a series of tests,

showing the results of each run, those who have

passed and those who failed. This interactivity with

the student tries to engage students in the course and

so help improve learning and, consequently, reduce

the failure (number of students unsuccessful).

4 AEV&ANIM AND ITS

EXPERIMENTAL

VALIDATION

In this approach, the student is exposed directly to

the resolution with use of automatic evaluation and

its feedback; and after that first individual trial, he

has to analyze the correct solution using the

animation tool. To adopt this approach, the teacher

prepares for each subject to teach a number of

problems relating to that topic with similar

difficulty. For each problem of the set, asks the

student to analyze the statement, develop the

algorithm and code it, passing to the test it with the

AES. After some time, the teacher provides his

solution and asks the students to analyze carefully

using the animation tool, looking to assimilate the

knowledge derived from it.

To validate this, we prepared an experimental

setting to get real feedback from its application in

classroom. The main objectives for this first

experiment were:

 Understand the behavior of students facing a

new and different situation;

 Observe if students are involved and

motivated;

 Understand the main difficulties faced by first

year students, when they are engaged with a

programming task: the interpretation of the

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statement, the development of algorithms or

their coding in a specific language;

 Check the effectiveness of the proposed

approach.

This approach assumes that the teacher selects a

powerful Animation tool, easy to use, and chooses

an AES that is user-friendly and returns a feedback

as complete as possible (with a diagnosis for the

errors found). It is also desirable that AES comments

the code quality. For our experiment, we chose Jeliot

and Mooshak, as said above.

In our case, to teach the introductory topic

“sequential numeric processing and conditional and

iterative control structures” we wrote three exercise

statements. After deciding the concrete tools to use,

the topic of the experimental lesson, and the

exercises to solve, it was necessary to write down a

careful plan for the lesson, so that all the students

enrolled could understand what they are asked to do

and how should they proceed—as the experiment

conducted in two classes with 25 students is not the

focus of this paper we suggest the reading of the

paper (Tavares et al., 2016a) for a detailed

description and discussion of the results. However

we report in the sequel a summary of the main

outcomes: it is possible to affirm that the evolution

of the behavior of the students during the class of

two hours showed that this approach led to a better

performance of the students. On one hand, it was

noted that the number of students with accepted

submissions increased and, on the other hand, that

the number of submissions increased and that the

number of compilation errors decreased. As students

did not gave up soon as the first error appear (they

keep searching for a correct solution) we concluded

that their motivation has increased; a second effect

of the increased effort is the number of base

mistakes that have been reduced. Motivation was

one of our main concerns. The experiment presented

also allowed us to understand the best way to

conduct future tests, for example, allowing greater

flexibility in the management of time during the

lesson. This means that we intend to propose the

three exercises at the beginning and allow students

to choose the time intervals to use in each of them;

In this way, they can explore the animation more

deeply if they find it important to sediment

knowledge before progressing to a new

implementation.

5 ANIM&AEV AND ITS

AUTOMATION

While AEv&Anim, described in the previous

section, is specially tailored to be applied in the

classroom following the traditional teaching method,

the next one, that we introduce in this section, is

thought to be used in a self-study process, at home.

In this approach, first the student is exposed to the

analysis of the problem and its resolution, with the

support of the Animation; then he goes on to a self-

resolution phase using automatic evaluation and its

rapid feedback. For each topic to be taught, the

teacher will prepare two sets of similar exercises.

For the exercises in the first set the teacher discusses

the statement, the resolution (outlines an algorithm)

and presents the program that solves it so that the

student can make his animation and thus analyze /

understand the solution.

For the exercises of the second set, after

discussing the statement, the teacher asks the

students to solve it and test the solution created

through an automatic evaluation system. In a third

moment, the teacher discusses with the students the

feedback received from the evaluator.

Following Anim&AEv, a web-based information

system (known as PEP, Plataforma para o Ensino

da Programação) was developed to support the

teacher in laboratory classes and, above all, provide

students with the possibility of doing study sessions

outside the classroom.

6 PEP SYSTEM

PEP platform will allow: (i) the teacher to carry and

maintain the exercises (organized by topics and

difficulties) to be used in each session, as well as to

plan the sessions; (ii) the student runs one or more

sessions to practice a particular theme, animating the

exercises and then solving them and testing them

with immediate feedback. PEP will also allow the

teacher to receive back information about how each

student's work session was performed (date and

time, sequence of solved exercises, time spent, etc.).

As can be seen in Figure 4, the system will consist

of two main components: the Back-office (BO) and

the Front-office (FO).

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Figure 4: PEP System Architecture.

The first one supports all database management

tasks with the questions that will later be used by the

second module to construct the sessions that will be

presented to the students. In the BO only the

teachers will have access and it is from there that

they can manage exercises (create, edit and delete),

plan sessions, as well as analyze the sessions

submitted by the students. In addition BO has two

more essential components: the compiler that reads

the formal specification of each session (written in a

specific domain language, DSL, which we have

created specifically for this purpose) and generates

the necessary code for the FO to mount the sessions;

and the analysis module that recover from the

database the information related to each session of

each student and presents it to the teacher so that it

can follow the learning process.

The Front-Office is intended for students, where

the sessions will be listed as well as saved the

information about each session, i.e. the identification

of the student who performs the session, the date, the

sequence of exercises, as well as the duration. All

this information will be stored in the database for

later possible analysis.

In Figure 5 there is a diagrammatic

representation of the interaction flow possible in the

interface presented to the student.

A simple access control mechanism is

implemented through the registration in the

platform. After the choice of the session, the user

will be confronted with two new options: part 1 that

uses animation techniques; and part 2 supported by

an automatic evaluation system to test students

solutions (recommended only after completing

part1).

Figure 5: Interaction Flow Diagram.

If student choose Part 1 (Animation), he has

access to a description of the problem as well as its

solution (Java code). He shall use Jeliot tool to

animate the resolution of the problem to a deep

understanding of the solution provided. In part 2

(Evaluation), only a description of a problem to

solve is presented to the student who is then asked to

solve it. Here the Mooshak Automatic Assessment

tool is used so that students can verify whether their

resolution is correct or not.

PEP Front-Office is illustrated by the screenshots

shown in Figures 6 through 9.

Figure 6: Listing course Sessions.

Figure 7: Access to Parts 1 and 2 of a Session.

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289

Figure 8: Part1-navigation buttons to invoke the Animator.

Figure 9: Part1- Problem statement.

PEP is an easy to use tool, accessible as a Web

application that can be used to increment motivation

for self-study activities -- we strongly believe this

will improve the overall learning process.

7 CONCLUSIONS

This paper discusses the need to find ways to

improve the teaching / learning process in courses of

introduction to programming. We studied and

discussed methods to act as external factors in the

extrinsic motivation and self-confidence of students

who easily disinterest when faced with difficulties.

In this sense, a combination of two existing tools has

been proposed in order to get more a effective

method: the animation of programs, to help

understand how programs really behave to solve the

problems; and the automatic evaluation of programs,

to provide students with immediate feedback on the

solutions they develop. Two approaches

(AEv&Anim and Anim&AEv) were then presented

that combine in opposite orders the two techniques

mentioned. The first of these has already been the

subject of an experimental analysis in the classroom,

as described; the second led to the implementation

of the Platform for Teaching Programming (PEP),

which may be used to help the teacher in class or the

student at home. As future work we plan to define

new classroom experiments and also to study how

PEP can be improved with gamification artefacts to

increase students motivation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work has been supported by COMPETE:

POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT –

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the

Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.

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