The ITiCSE 99 RoboProf talk

At the end of the talk i was asked three questions

1. Linda Stern: This system is so comprehensive, did students go to the lectures? answer
2. David Ginet: Did you mark program design? answer
3. Bogumil Hausman: I am intrigued at the fact that students can play Quake for hours at end ignoring hunger and sleep. I'm not sure if RoboProf has exactly the same motivating force as Quake. (In fact I can't remember the question exactly.) answer

1. This system is so comprehensive did students go to the lectures?

   "Yes. I feel that lectures are important as they officially mark the material that has been covered."

   In fact that wasn't much of an answer and i could have said
   "In order to learn effectively students have to want to learn and that will be helped if they see that we are enthusiastic about the course and work hard to help them.
   With a system such as this there is a risk that students will figure that the lecturer is trying to avoid work.
   However it should be possible to make the lectures optional; i imagine that different students would benefit from different approaches.
   Another point is that since RoboProf was only used for six weeks, there is a danger that students missing lectures during that period would fail to come back for the second half of the course."

2. Did you mark program design?
   "Yes ... I selected a number of programs and marked them based on criteria I had given to the students - the students knew there were marks for design"

   PS: functions had not been covered and were not used in the RoboProf problems. The design rules were

   • comments at the start of the program should include pseudocode.
   • program code should reflect as closely as possible the logic of the problem.
   • use sensible variable names

3. "Well maybe I cheated in mentioning Quake, but I did want to try to understand and capture some of the motivating power of quake."
   PS: It would be interesting to see if some of the graphical elements of Quake could also be harnessed for pedagogical purposes.