SAICSIT 2024 Paper published as book chapter by Springer

Springer updated on publishing of SAICSIT 2024 Conference paper “ Dear Herman Kandjimi, Congratulations! The eBook you contributed to has now been published on SpringerLink – our content platform, which offers customers and library patrons access to your publication at their workplace, home or wherever they want to read it”

Abstract: Problem-solving skills are an integral component within the computer science field. Due to the diversity brought about by students following different learning and programming behaviours, it is challenging to track and identify when students get overwhelmed while writing programs. When students are overwhelmed, they are unable to complete learning objectives on time and follow prescribed pathways, depriving them of the opportunity to learn new concepts. In this paper, we developed and evaluated the quality of Markov models that encode student programming behaviours based on the evolution of source code submissions during formative practical assignments. In doing so, we use Abstract Syntax Trees (ASTs) extracted from the source code, which are used for clustering similar submissions and tracking students’ progressive approaches within the Markov models. An approach based on MinHashLSH is presented that works on AST nodes as input to emphasise structural similarity and related programming approaches. As such, the effectiveness of the Modified MinHashLSH approach is based on the clusters that make up the Markov model. The research result shows that we can successfully create a high-quality model based on previous data. This model result could be used to inform the development of learning interventions that would move students from their stuck states.
Keywords: Problem-solving · Programming · Markov Model · Source- Code Evolution · Clustering · Model evaluation.

Acknowledgments.

This work is financially supported by the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering through the HPI Research School in Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) at the University of Cape Town.