Design Principals for Building a Collaborative Exchange Platform for Auto-gradable Programming Exercises

Abstract

The emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) has made computer science more accessible by offering courses on various programming languages and technologies to anyone with an internet connection. These MOOCs have demonstrated that providing learners with the necessary tools for self-regulated learning and formative feedback remains crucial to ensuring successful learning outcomes. Similar to MOOC learners, university and high-school students also benefit from interactive exercises and automated feedback. However, university lecturers and especially high-school teachers often lack access to suitable programming tasks and the necessary tools. Therefore, we started working on CodeHarbor, an innovative tool designed explicitly for teachers to share, rate, and discuss auto-gradable programming exercises with their colleagues. In this article, we describe the use of interviews and thematic analyses to examine the problem space and opportunity areas experienced by computer science educators who engage in exchanging digital teaching materials for their classes. As a result, we defined twelve user stories and three design principles that should be considered when developing a platform for exchanging computer science teaching materials. With collaborative authoring tools designed primarily for computer science teachers, we envision CodeHarbor to become an important tool to make computer science education more interactive and enjoyable.