Web environment to support teaching introductory programming

Abstract

This thesis describes a Web based education support environment for supplementing the teaching of “Introduction to Programming” (code CMPE150) course at Boğaziçi University by the Computer Engineering Department. The course in question has always been a challenging one to teach due to its nature and the size of the student body. This work aims to provide a higher quality learning environment given the constraints of where it is applied. To this end a system was designed, implemented, and used in the teaching of this course. This work reports on design, development and use of this system. This thesis will describe in detail why and how we built the system as well as our use for two semesters. In Chapter 2 we explain our design motivations. In Chapter 3 we present work related to supplemental online teaching environments. In Chapter 4 we describe the system requirements. In Chapter 5 we introduce the design of the system. In Chapter 6 we provide implementation decisions and details. In Chapter 7 we explain the use of this system both from the student as well as staff perspective. In Chapter 8 we present consequences and benefits of the feedback mechanisms that we implemented. In Chapter 9 we present our evaluation regarding the use during two semesters. In Chapter 10 we outline future work. Finally, in Chapter 11 we complete the thesis with concluding remarks.