alice-teacher "Many small programs" in Alice

[Vanderhyde, James]

Dear Alice teachers,

I am trying to improve my "CS 0.5” pre-CS 1 Alice course in terms of pass rate and in terms of preparation for Java. We have this optional course called Virtual Worlds that many students take in spring of their first year in college, in the hopes that it will prepare them somewhat for Java the following fall.

Last year I had something of an unacceptable pass rate in Virtual Worlds, and I am looking to improve the course. One thing that interests me is the “many small programs” approach some are taking in early programming courses (for example, https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/140/papers/27535/view).

The many small programs approach relies on auto grading of Java or other code to give students a lot of rapid feedback. This is a problem with Alice, because it can’t be auto graded (to my knowledge), and it is slow for me to open and check everyone’s projects.

Does anyone have any ideas that could work for Alice? The best idea I have so far is to write lots of small quizzes with multiple-choice answers. The quiz questions would either be “What does this code do?” or “Which line of code is correct to make this behavior?” and such things. Does anyone have lots of quiz questions like this? Or any other ideas?

James
—
James Vanderhyde
Associate Professor and Department Chair
Computer Science
Saint Xavier University
3700 W. 103rd St.
Chicago, IL 60655
773-298-3454

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