This study explored the effectiveness of scaffolding in students' reflection writing process. We compared two sections of an introductory computer programming course (N=188). In Section 1, students did not receive any scaffolding while generating reflections, whereas in Section 2, students were scaffolded during the reflection writing process.…

Large language models (LLMs), such as Codex, hold great promise in enhancing programming education by automatically generating feedback for students. We investigate using LLMs to generate feedback for fixing syntax errors in Python programs, a key scenario in introductory programming. More concretely, given a student's buggy program, our goal is…

As programming must be learned by doing, introductory programming course learners need to solve many problems, e.g., on systems such as 'Online Judges'. However, as such courses are often compulsory for non-Computer Science (nonCS) undergraduates, this may cause difficulties to learners that do not have the typical intrinsic motivation for…

Teachers may wish to use open-ended learning activities and tests, but they are burdensome to assess compared to forced-choice instruments. At the same time, forced-choice assessments suffer from issues of guessing (when used as tests) and may not encourage valuable behaviors of construction and generation of understanding (when used as learning…

Many studies have demonstrated that testing students on to-be-learned materials can be an effective learning activity. However, past studies have also shown that some practice test formats are more effective than others. Open-ended recall or short answer practice tests may be effective because the questions prompt deeper processing as students…

A number of studies have suggested the potentials of corpus tools in vocabulary learning. However, there are still some concerns. Corpus tools might be too complicated to use; example sentences retrieved from corpus tools might be too difficult to understand; processing large number of sample sentences could be challenging and time-consuming;…

Students in introductory programming classes often articulate their questions and information needs incompletely. Consequently, the automatic classification of student questions to provide automated tutorial responses is a challenging problem. This paper analyzes 411 questions from an introductory Java programming course by reducing the natural…

All beginners at simultaneous interpreting falter at the flow of oral language, unaware that their short-term semantic flow of oral language, unaware that his short-term semantic memory can be managed more efficiently if used to store units of meaning rather than discrete words. Beginners must learn to listen for sense from the start and focus…