Enhancing student experience in remote computer programming course practice: A case of the Java language

Abstract

The increasing availability of remote education opportunities enables students to access different types of study programs limited by the dimensions of a classroom. Remote learning has been accredited as an effective technique for delivering education to students and teachers globally. However, some academic disciplines such as Computer Science are abounding with many challenges in practicing programming tasks in remote settings. This research aims to understand the students’ existing setup for practicing JAVA programming in remote settings and proposes an intervention to help students get appropriate hints to fix compiler errors. The proposed solution has implications for both students and teachers, as it is under the teacher’s direct observation. The teacher can monitor the content according to students’ needs, which may potentially save them from teaching challenges. To formulate our study, we first surveyed to understand the challenges that students face in JAVA programming when trying to fix errors in a remote setting. Then, based on the results of the first survey and prior experience of conducting programming course practicals along with the existing literature, the proposed web portal was created and presented to the students to fix errors. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the proposed setup followed by a student attitude survey. The results show the portal’s leverage in reducing the time required to fix errors and the number of compilation attempts. The survey indicates a positive response.