Using a Notification, Recommendation and Monitoring System to Improve Interaction in an Automated Assessment Tool: An Analysis of Students’ Perceptions

Abstract

ABSTRACT Online courses heavily relying on programming skills tend to be difficult and time-consuming for students, who may get frustrated when stuck in an assignment. Obviously, this may increase drop-out rate and decrease academic performance as well as students’ satisfaction with the course and the institution in general. In this context, we propose a notification, recommendation and monitoring system which is integrated into an automatic assessment tool with the aim to enhance the learning process in virtual classrooms. In particular, notifications, recommendations and visualization reports are used to show the activity, progress and performance of all students. The system is implemented in a distributed computing course in an online university. A quantitative analysis method used to collect and analyze data of students’ perceptions regarding the system showed that: (1) notifications helped students organize their time and encourage them to work more effectively; (2) recommendations allowed students to receive useful and timely scaffolding for coping with their problems and completing their assignment; and (3) visualization reports provided valuable insights toward monitoring the learning process. Moreover, the analysis of correlations showed that the reception of recommendations and the visualization reports is related to encourage students to do more executions and to start earlier the assignments. Finally, this study seeks to contribute to online teachers’ endeavor to enhance students’ engagement, performance and learning in the field of programming (and not only).