RoboProf and an introductory computer programming course

  • Authors:
  • Charlie Daly

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Applications, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9

  • Venue:
  • ITiCSE '99 Proceedings of the 4th annual SIGCSE/SIGCUE ITiCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education
  • Year:
  • 1999

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Abstract

RoboProf is an online teaching system. It is based on WWW technology and can easily incorporate WWW-compatible media such as graphics, audio and video. It is structured as a self-paced course book: RoboProf presents the student with information on a closely-defined topic and then marks a set of exercises covering that material. When the students results are satisfactory, a new topic is introduced.The idea behind RoboProf is to increase motivation by borrowing ideas from certain games. These ideas include providing a challenge, giving quick feedback, making progress visible and encouraging experimentation.RoboProf was used to teach an introductory computer programming course. An introductory computer programming course must cover two main areas, the computer model (syntax and semantics of a programming language) and program design. In this paper I show how RoboProf can be effectively used to help teach the syntax and semantics of a programming language.