Applying PSP to Support Teaching of Programming Courses

Abstract

The programming assignments are an essential means in programming courses to help students de-velop problem-solving skills and improve their understanding of programming concepts. By analyzing the process about how students practice their assignments, instructors can obtain valuable insights into student performances and understand their learning progresses. However, gathering the process data of assignment practices not only can be time-consuming and error-prone, but also can impose significant overheads to stu-dents. This paper describes how PSP can be useful in examining the process of students’ programming prac-tices and discusses several process statistics and their indications to student performances. A supporting tool is proposed to facilitate the tracking and analyzing of the process data. In particular, the proposed tool can automatically gather the process data for students, such as the size of programs, the time spent on the assign-ments, and the number of injected and removed defects. Moreover, based on the collected data, the tool can provide various statistical reports to facilitate the analysis of student performances and the understanding of students’ programming problems so that instructors can develop a more effective teaching strategy to help students improve their programming skills.