research-article

How Teachers Would Help Students to Improve Their Code

Authors:

Bastiaan Heeren,

Johan JeuringAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Pages 119 - 125

https://doi.org/10.1145/3304221.3319780

Published: 02 July 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Code quality has been receiving less attention than program correctness in both the practice of and research into programming education. Writing poor quality code might be a sign of carelessness, or not fully understanding programming concepts and language constructs. Teachers play an important role in addressing quality issues, and encouraging students to write better code as early as possible.

In this paper we explore to what extent teachers address code quality in their teaching, which code quality issues they observe and how they would help novices to improve their code. We presented student code of low quality to 30 experienced teachers and asked them which hints they would give and how the student should improve the code step by step. We compare these hints to the output of professional code quality tools.

Although most teachers gave similar hints on reducing the algorithmic complexity and removing clutter, they gave varying subsets of hints on other topics. We found a large variety in how they would solve issues in code. We noticed that professional code quality tools do not point out the algorithmic complexity topics that teachers mention. Finally, we give some general guidelines on how to approach code improvement.

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Cited By

Birillo A(2024)Bringing Industry-Grade Code Quality and Practices into Software Engineering Education (Doctoral Consortium)Proceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699571(1-2)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699571
Artser EBirillo AGolubev YTigina MKeuning HVyahhi NBryksin T(2024)Clustering MOOC Programming Solutions to Diversify Their Presentation to StudentsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699548(1-8)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699548
Zhang ATang XOney SChen YJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)CFlow: Supporting Semantic Flow Analysis of Students' Code in Programming Problems at ScaleProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662025(188-199)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662025
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

How Teachers Would Help Students to Improve Their Code
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education
        Software engineering education

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cover image ACM Conferences

ITiCSE '19: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

July 2019

583 pages

ISBN:9781450368957

DOI:10.1145/3304221

General Chairs:
Bruce Scharlau
University of Aberdeen, UK
,
Roger McDermott
Robert Gordon University, UK
,
Program Chairs:
Arnold Pears
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
,
Mihaela Sabin
University of New Hampshire, USA

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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 the author(s) 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: 02 July 2019

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Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)

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ITiCSE '19

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SIGCSE

ITiCSE '19: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

July 15 - 17, 2019

Aberdeen, Scotland Uk

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Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

Birillo A(2024)Bringing Industry-Grade Code Quality and Practices into Software Engineering Education (Doctoral Consortium)Proceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699571(1-2)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699571
Artser EBirillo AGolubev YTigina MKeuning HVyahhi NBryksin T(2024)Clustering MOOC Programming Solutions to Diversify Their Presentation to StudentsProceedings of the 24th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research10.1145/3699538.3699548(1-8)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699538.3699548
Zhang ATang XOney SChen YJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)CFlow: Supporting Semantic Flow Analysis of Students' Code in Programming Problems at ScaleProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662025(188-199)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662025
Řechtáčková APelánek REffenberger TMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Catalog of Code Quality Defects in Introductory ProgrammingProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653638(59-65)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653638
Izu CMirolo CMonga MLonati VBarendsen ESheard JPaterson J(2024)Asking Students to Refactor their Code: A Simple and Valuable ExerciseProceedings of the 2024 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3649217.3653546(73-79)Online publication date: 3-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3649217.3653546
van der Werf VSwidan AHermans FSpecht MAivaloglou ERoychoudhury APaiva AAbreu RStorey MGama KSiegmund J(2024)Teachers' Beliefs and Practices on the Naming of Variables in Introductory Python Programming CoursesProceedings of the 46th International Conference on Software Engineering: Software Engineering Education and Training10.1145/3639474.3640069(368-379)Online publication date: 14-Apr-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639474.3640069
Kirk DLuxton-Reilly ATempero E(2024)A Literature-Informed Model for Code Style Principles to Support Teachers of Text-Based ProgrammingProceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3636243.3636258(134-143)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636243.3636258
Tempero ETu Y(2024)Using Program Comprehension Models to Teach ComprehensibilityProceedings of the 26th Australasian Computing Education Conference10.1145/3636243.3636244(1-10)Online publication date: 29-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3636243.3636244
Izu CMirolo CLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Exploring CS1 Student's Notions of Code QualityProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588808(12-18)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588808
Birillo AArtser EGolubev YTigina MKeuning HVyahhi NBryksin TLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)Detecting Code Quality Issues in Pre-written Templates of Programming Tasks in Online CoursesProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588800(152-158)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588800
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