Related papers: Automated Test Generation for Scratch Programs

Creating programs with block-based programming languages like Scratch is easy and fun. Block-based programs can nevertheless contain bugs, in particular when learners have misconceptions about programming. Even when they do not, Scratch…

Computing students increasingly rely on generative AI tools for programming assistance, often without formal instruction or guidance. This highlights a need to teach students how to effectively interact with AI models, particularly through…

Automatic evaluation of generative tasks using large language models faces challenges due to ambiguous criteria. Although automatic checklist generation is a potentially promising approach, its usefulness remains underexplored. We…

Proof Blocks is a software tool which enables students to write proofs by dragging and dropping prewritten proof lines into the correct order. These proofs can be graded completely automatically, enabling students to receive rapid feedback…

Monitoring in-class programming exercises can help instructors identify struggling students and common challenges. However, understanding students' progress can be prohibitively difficult, particularly for multi-faceted problems that…

Game-like programs have become increasingly popular in many software engineering domains such as mobile apps, web applications, or programming education. However, creating tests for programs that have the purpose of challenging human…

In this paper, we present Scratch Community Blocks, a new system that enables children to programmatically access, analyze, and visualize data about their participation in Scratch, an online community for learning computer programming. At…

Visual programming environments are increasingly part of the curriculum in schools. Their potential for promoting creative thinking of students is an important factor in their adoption. However, there does not exist a standard approach for…

Implementing automated unit tests is an important but time-consuming activity in software development. To assist developers in this task, many techniques for automating unit test generation have been developed. However, despite this effort,…

The prevalence of software systems has become an integral part of modern-day living. Software usage has increased significantly, leading to its growth in both size and complexity. Consequently, software development is becoming a more…

This paper describes the design and evaluation of DSAScratch, an extension to Scratch, a widely used block-based programming language. The DSAScratch framework implements advanced data structures such as arrays, sets, dictionaries, and…

We can never be certain that a software system is correct simply by testing it, but with every additional successful test we become less uncertain about its correctness. In absence of source code or elaborate specifications and models,…

Programming students have a widespread access to powerful Generative AI tools like ChatGPT. While this can help understand the learning material and assist with exercises, educators are voicing more and more concerns about an overreliance…

In this paper, I describe a platform for sharing programmable media on the web called ScratchR. As the backbone of an on-line community of creative learners, ScratchR will give members access to an audience and inspirational ideas from each…

Search Based Software Testing (SBST) is a popular automated testing technique which uses a feedback mechanism to search for faults in software. Despite its popularity, it has fundamental challenges related to the design, construction and…

Documenting the functionality of software units with code comments, e.g., Javadoc comments, is a common programmer best-practice in software engineering. This paper introduces a novel test generation technique that exploits the code-comment…

We study the problem of generating source code in a strongly typed, Java-like programming language, given a label (for example a set of API calls or types) carrying a small amount of information about the code that is desired. The generated…

Our ongoing development and deployment of an online robotics education platform highlighted a gap in providing an interactive, feedback-rich learning environment essential for mastering programming concepts in robotics, which they were not…

Games are usually created incrementally, requiring repeated testing of the same scenarios, which is a tedious and error-prone task for game developers. Therefore, we aim to alleviate this game testing process by encapsulating it into a game…

Blocks-based programming has become the lingua franca for introductory coding. Studies have found that experience with blocks-based programming can help beginners learn more traditional text-based languages. We explore how blocks…