An Explanation Tool to Support Learning of Basic Programming

• Published in: Proceedings. Frontiers in Education. 36th Annual Conference pp. 21 - 26
• Main Authors: Tobar, C.M., Oliveira, C.L., de Freitas, R.L.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2006
• Subjects: C programming; Computational intelligence; Computer languages; Computerized monitoring; Engineering students; Explanation; Humans; Intelligent systems; Intelligent tutoring system; Learning support; Logic programming; Logic testing; Natural languages; Programming profession
• ISBN: 1424402565; 9781424402564
• ISSN: 0190-5848; 2377-634X
• DOI: 10.1109/FIE.2006.322578

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) have assisted engineering students in several domains. The domains considered ideal for ITS contain easily represented issues in computational form and allow the interaction type between student and ITS be limited to a restricted set of words, symbols, and numbers. It is proposed to exploit intelligent system technology to support an explanation process in the context of ITS. A system was developed to support explanations of examples to assist the learning process of basic programming. Examples of C programs, previously elaborated by a teacher, are presented to a student from who are expected explanations to source-code regions. Using techniques of approximate natural language understanding, the system tries to recognize explanation contents to send the result to a module that classifies explanations as correct, incorrect, or incomplete according to the context of the proposed activity. The context can be configured by the teacher. After explanation processing, an ITS could determine the subsequent stages according to its educational strategy