Individualized Exercises for Assessment and Self-Assessment of Programming Knowledge

Individualized questions and exercises help to overcome problems associated with traditional "static" multiple-choice questions. With this approach, an author creates a pattern of a question. At the presentation time, the pattern is instantiated with randomly generated parameters from a particular set. Thus, every question pattern is able to produce a large or even unlimited number of different questions. Same patterns can be used in different versions of the same course, different semesters, and even different courses. In self-assessment context, the same question can be used again and again with different parameters allowing the students to achieve mastery. The focus of this project is to systematically explore the use of individualized questions and exercises in programming-related subjects. Our goal is to find the ways of using this technology in programming-related courses that maximize its strong sides and minimize known problems.