Automatically Generating Programming Questions Corresponding to Rubrics Using Assertions and Invariants

• Published in: Sustainable ICT, Education and Learning pp. 89 - 98
• Main Authors: Hagiya, Masami, Fukuda, Kosuke, Tanabe, Yoshinori, Saito, Toshinori
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.01.2019
• Series: IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology
• Subjects: Assertion; Correctness proof; Examination; Invariant; Programming education; Rubric
• ISBN: 3030287637; 9783030287634
• ISSN: 1868-4238; 1868-422X
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-28764-1_11

The importance of programming in the context of primary and secondary education is increasing, reflecting incorporation of programming in the reformation of Japanese curriculum guidelines for schools, the release of which is planned in 2020. Earlier research developed proposed rubrics for assessment of student attainment levels in various fields of high-school informatics, including programming. The reformation requires that university entrance examinations should include informatics; it has thus become necessary to create a large number of questions exploring various levels of attainment. Here, we develop methods automatically generating questions in the field of programming; we use program correctness proofs and a theorem prover to this end. Questions corresponding to each level are automatically generated from a single program featuring a correctness proof by analyzing the source code and the proof with the aid of a theorem prover. These methods can help prepare questions for university entrance examinations, and can also be applied to E-learning systems when questions are used to allow evaluation of student attainment levels. We conducted a small experiment, and the results show that this is a promising approach.