Completed Projects

Progressive digitalization is changing not only the job market but also the educational landscape. With funding from the DigitalPakt Schule and in detail from the BAYERN DIGITAL II program, serious changes in computer science education are being driven forward, which entail new challenges at the various levels of education. 

The CS4MINTS project addresses these challenges along with the educational levels and ties in with measures already launched as part of the MINTerAKTIV project, such as strengthening the encounter of increasing student heterogeneity in the introductory computer science course.

For example, for promoting gifted students, the Frühstudium in computer science is actively promoted for girls, and the offer is explicitly expanded. A significant increase in the proportion of women in computer science is to be achieved in the long term through early action against gender-specific stereotypes regarding computer science and an expansion of the training program to include gender-sensitive computer science instruction in all types of schools.

The expansion of the compulsory subject of computer science in all schools also creates a great need for suitable teaching concepts and a strengthening of teacher training. For this purpose, a regional network is to be established during the project period to provide university-developed and evaluated teaching ideas for strengthening STEM in the curricular and extra-curricular settings. 

In 2020, we began the initial piloting of the design to automate feedback in the introductory programming exercises. For this purpose, the return values of the JUnit tests of students' solutions were analyzed, and possible sources of errors were investigated. The next step is to work out a way to infer programming errors or student misconceptions based on these return values. Finally, these efforts aim to provide the students with automatically generated, competence-oriented feedback available to them after the programming tasks have been submitted (or, if necessary, already during the development phase). The feedback should show where errors occurred in the program code and point out possible causes.

Concerning handling heterogeneity, we have compared the Repetitorium Informatik (RIP) course content with the Bavarian curriculum of different school types in 2020. Subsequently, the content must be adapted so that first-year students from the most diverse educational backgrounds have equal opportunities to identify possible deficits through the Repetitorium and remedy them. Besides, a daily programming consultation hour was set up for the first time during the Repetitorium in the winter term 2020. Here, participants were able to ask questions and receive feedback on the assignments.

For many students, the initial steps of learning to program is one of the major challenges at the beginning of their studies. In order to provide additional feedback to novice programmers, we have designed and piloted the Feedback+ project in 2021. Within the framework of Feedback+, students have the opportunity to document problems that occur during the processing of the exercises or during the setup/use of the programming environment. They can also receive additional feedback in individual consultation sessions (weekly). For this purpose, we have set up a StudOn environment in which problems can be systematically documented. An initial evaluation in the form of individual interviews with the participating students received consistently positive feedback and is motivation to continue the project.