A Code Distance Approach to Measure Originality in Computer Programming

Elijah Chou, Davide Fossati, Arnon Hershkovitz

2024

Abstract

We propose a novel approach to measure student originality in computer programming. We collected two sets of programming problems in Java and Python, and their solutions submitted by multiple students. We parsed the students’ code into abstract syntax trees, and calculated the distance among code submissions within problem groups using a tree edit distance algorithm. We estimated each student’s originality as the normalized average distance between their code and the other students’ codes. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a negative correlation between students’ coding performance (i.e., the degree of correctness of their code) and students’ programming originality. Further analysis comparing state (features of the problem set) and trait (features of the students) for this measure revealed a correlation with trait and no correlation with state. This suggests that we are likely measuring some trait that a student has, possibly originality, and not some coincidental feature of our problem set. We also examined the validity of our proposed measure by observing the agreement between human graders and our measure in ranking the originality of pairs of code.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Chou E., Fossati D. and Hershkovitz A. (2024). A Code Distance Approach to Measure Originality in Computer Programming. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU; ISBN 978-989-758-697-2, SciTePress, pages 541-548. DOI: 10.5220/0012632100003693

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu24,
author={Elijah Chou and Davide Fossati and Arnon Hershkovitz},
title={A Code Distance Approach to Measure Originality in Computer Programming},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU},
year={2024},
pages={541-548},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012632100003693},
isbn={978-989-758-697-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU
TI - A Code Distance Approach to Measure Originality in Computer Programming
SN - 978-989-758-697-2
AU - Chou E.
AU - Fossati D.
AU - Hershkovitz A.
PY - 2024
SP - 541
EP - 548
DO - 10.5220/0012632100003693
PB - SciTePress