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2024 (English)In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education: Working Group Reports, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2024, p. 339-377Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Characterising code quality is a challenge that was addressed by a previous ITiCSE Working Group (Börstler et al., 2017). As emerged from that study, educators, developers, and students have different perceptions of the aspects involved. The perception of code quality by CS1 students develops from the feedback they receive when submitting practical work. As a consequence of increasingly large classes and the widespread use of autograders, student code is predominantly assessed based on functional correctness, emphasising a machine-oriented perspective with scarce or no feedback given about human-oriented aspects of code quality. Such limited perception of code quality may negatively impact how students understand, create, and interact with code artefacts. Although Börstler et al. concluded that "code quality should be discussed more thoroughly in educational programs", the lack of materials and time constraints have slowed down progress in that regard. The goal of this Working Group is to support CS1 instructors who want to introduce a broader perspective on code quality in their classroom by providing a curated list of examples and activities suitable for novices. In order to achieve this goal, we have extracted from the CS education literature a range of examples and activities, which have then been analyzed and organized in terms of code quality dimensions. We have also mapped the topics covered in those materials to existing taxonomies relevant to code quality in CS1. Based on this work, we provide (1) a catalog of examples that illustrates the range of quality defects that could be addressed at the CS1 level and (2) a sample set of activities devised to introduce code quality to CS1 students. These materials have the potential to help educators address the subject in more depth.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2024
National Category
Didactics Computer Sciences Software Engineering
Research subject
Software Engineering
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:bth-27456 (URN)10.1145/3689187.3709615 (DOI)
Conference
Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE), Milan, July 8-10, 2024
2025-02-142025-02-142025-02-18Bibliographically approved