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Interactive educational simulations for promoting the comprehension of basic compiler construction concepts

Published: 01 July 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Evaluators 2.0 is an educational software system that lets instructors in introductory compiler construction courses generate interactive simulators from batteries of exercises concerning basic concepts in attribute grammars. The system also makes it possible to analyze the activities of the students who use these simulators. Students interact with the simulators generated to decide the evaluation order of semantic attributes in the attributed syntax trees, and they receive immediate feedback about the actions performed. Thus, these simulations help students to understand the fundamental concepts of the formalism of attribute grammars and of its underlying computational model. This paper describes the different software tools that constitute Evaluators 2.0 as well as the nature of the simulators generated, and also reports on different assessments of the system involving both instructors and students.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)MiniJava on RISC-V: A Game of Global Compilers DominationProceedings of the Workshop Dedicated to Jens Palsberg on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday10.1145/3694848.3694854(21-29)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2024
  • (2018)Specification and evaluation of an assessment engine for educational games: Empowering educators with an assessment editor and a learning analytics dashboardEntertainment Computing10.1016/j.entcom.2018.07.00327(209-224)Online publication date: Aug-2018
  • (2014)Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science EducationProceedings of the Working Group Reports of the 2014 on Innovation & Technology in Computer Science Education Conference10.1145/2713609.2713611(31-57)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2014
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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '13: Proceedings of the 18th ACM conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
July 2013
384 pages
ISBN:9781450320788
DOI:10.1145/2462476
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 July 2013

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Author Tags

  1. analysis tool
  2. attribute grammar
  3. authoring tool
  4. education in compiler construction
  5. interacttive educational simulation

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ITiCSE '13
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ITiCSE '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 51 of 161 submissions, 32%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)MiniJava on RISC-V: A Game of Global Compilers DominationProceedings of the Workshop Dedicated to Jens Palsberg on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday10.1145/3694848.3694854(21-29)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2024
  • (2018)Specification and evaluation of an assessment engine for educational games: Empowering educators with an assessment editor and a learning analytics dashboardEntertainment Computing10.1016/j.entcom.2018.07.00327(209-224)Online publication date: Aug-2018
  • (2014)Increasing Adoption of Smart Learning Content for Computer Science EducationProceedings of the Working Group Reports of the 2014 on Innovation & Technology in Computer Science Education Conference10.1145/2713609.2713611(31-57)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2014
  • (2014)Attribute grammars made easier: EvDebugger a visual debugger for attribute grammars2014 International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE)10.1109/SIIE.2014.7017699(23-28)Online publication date: Nov-2014
  • (2013)A process model for the generative production of interactive simulations in engineering educationProceedings of the First International Conference on Technological Ecosystem for Enhancing Multiculturality10.1145/2536536.2536552(95-103)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2013

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