4B Programming Excellence

8/3/2019 4B Programming Excellence

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Persidangan Pembangunan Pelajar Peringkat Kebangsaan 2008

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 22-23Oktober 2008

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Programming Excellence through Academic Competitions Case Study iPC 08

Jaspaljeet Singha, Alan Cheah Kah Hoeb, Azlan Bin Yusofc,

Salman Yussofd, Siva Kumar Dorairaje, Uwe Dippelf

College of Information Technology,

Universiti Tenaga Nasional,

43009 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.

{Jaspaljeet, Alancheah, AzlanY, Salman, Sivakumar, Udippel} @ uniten.edu.my

Abstract

The issues relating to students with weaknesses in programming subjects have been known in close to all

Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) in Malaysia. There are a lot of assumptions on, and implication of, this issue.

A recent study conducted at Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN) indicates that our students are overall

satisfied with the lecturing and tutoring personnel, including the materials used, in the programming courses.

The findings reveal, though, that a majority of the students spend less time to prepare and study for theirprogramming subjects. As a result, we had to conclude that the students lack the necessary commitment to equip

themselves with better programming skills. In an effort to motivate our students to become more skillful in

programming, we have organized an inaugural Inter-Department Programming Competition (iPC 08), a

programming contest between the departments of the technical colleges in UNITEN. This competition was open

to all students that have completed the first programming subject, Principles of Programming. The competition

questions were based on the language taught in this course, C. Each department was to send at least one team of

students, to be selected by the Heads of Department. A real-time online submission system was used for the

participants to submit their answers. Upon receiving the answer from the contestants, a gremium of judges (IT

lecturers) evaluated the respective answers. The iPC 08 competition managed to draw the attention of many

students. The overall response to the competition was very encouraging. This paper focuses on the processes

involved in conducting the competition. We strongly believe that it can serve other IHLs as an inspiration for

organizing similar competitions at their respective institutions.

Keywords: competition; programming; student development

1. Introduction

Teaching and learning the first programming

language is a common problem to most lecturers

and students respectively. An introduction to

programming consists of a difficult mental task for

students and for this reason intense research activity

[2, 5, 6] has been carried out which aims to explore

the relevant problems. Recently our faculty has

conducted a comprehensive study to identify

potential challenges that students face in learning

their first programming language.The study has been divided into three main

areas: support from the faculty, effort from students

and outcome of programming course grades. The

study reveals that most students are satisfied with

the way the lectures and labs are conducted. The

students have indicated that they are contend with

the course materials and facilities provided by the

faculty for their programming course. Therefore,

with such state of art facility, dedicated lecturers

and good teaching approach every student is

expected to perform well and above average in their

first programming course.

The outcome of programming courses is not

much satisfactory in terms of students grades and

their motivation. Students find the assignments and

projects given are difficult and they often do not

perform well in course works. They survey also

indicates that they are not keen in taking up

programming courses. These facts are contradicting

to the hypotheses that the students are expected to

perform well with good support from the faculty.

The reasons for this contradiction are students lackmotivation and enthusiasm in learning

programming courses. The students indicated that

they spend less time in improving their

programming skills and they have wrong mindset

that programming courses are difficult. So it has

become a challenge to the faculty members to

change their mindset and to cultivate good

programming practices that would eventually

increase their motivation and interest in

programming courses. Among the many possible

ways to achieve this goal, the faculty members have


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decided to increase students involvement in

academic competitions. By doing so, the students

are expected to realize the importance of computer

programming in the current IT industry. By

participating in such competitions, they will be able

to improve their programming skills and increase

motivation level towards programming courses.

Competition is one of the recommended strategiesto improving individual outcomes in introductory

computer science courses [4].

The Student Development Committee (SDC)

which coordinates our students activities have

several units, with specific responsibilities. The

Academic Competition Unit (ACU) is responsible

to identify, encourage and groom our students to

participate in external academic competitions.

Apart of that, ACU also organizes its own

competitions. In order to handle the current

challenges, the ACU has been entrusted to organize

an inaugural Inter-Department Programming

Competition (iPC 08) that would meet the

objective of improving motivation and interest in

programming courses within our students.

2. Competition Approach

The iPC 08 was targeted at the students of

College of Information Technology (CoIT) and

College of Engineering (CoE) in our university.

These students, irrespective of their program and

specialisation, need to take up a fundamental

programming course in C language. The

departments of CoIT are Software Engineering,

Systems & Network, Information Systems and

Graphics & Multimedia. Similarly, the departments

in CoE are Electrical Power Engineering,

Electronic & Communications Engineering,

Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering.

The iPC 08 Secretariat decided to invite all

departments from CoIT and CoE to participate in

iPC 08. We have requested each department to

identify a Liaison Officer (lecturer in-charge)

whose responsibilities are to communicate with the

iPC 08 Secretariat and form the teams (with two

students in a team) to represent their respective

department. The Liaison Officers active

participation was crucial to the success of the

contest.

In order to ensure that the students from all the

departments are eligible to participate, we had tomake sure that the contest questions only involve

the syllabus of the fundamental programming

course. We had decided to accept only two teams

from each department so that no specific

department exploits the contest. Although some

departments may have more than two teams keen or

qualified to participate in the contest, it was the

responsibility of the Liaison Officer of the

department to perform an internal selection to

identify the most eligible teams to represent their

department. The internal selection may be in a form

of interview with the students or even a simple

programming task to be completed by the students

within a stipulated time.

We have decided to make iPC 08 an open-book

contest because the focus was on the problem

solving and not the C language syntax. Students felt

more confident in participating in an open-book

contest which emulates several other programmingcontests in Malaysia. Nevertheless, they are not

allowed to talk to anyone other than their team-

mate. The contest prizes were attractive enough for

the students as well as the department. The winners

receive cash prizes and certificates while the

department receives a specially designed trophy.

These winners would also be the potential

candidates for any future external programming

contests.

3. Competition Content

The questions for the competition were

developed by a group of senior lecturers who are

well-versed in programming. There are eight

questions in total and each lecturer was assigned to

develop two questions. Since the purpose of the

competition is to select students to participate in

external programming competitions such as ACM

International Collegiate Programming Contest

(ICPC) [1] and e-Genting [3], the question

development starts by going through the previous

questions in those competitions. We found out that

the e-Genting competition is more difficult in the

sense that the questions require knowledge from

higher-level programming classes. Since this

competition is open to all students who have taken

only an introductory programming class, we have

decided that the questions should be at the level of

ACM ICPC or less.

The eight questions developed are of varying

difficulty level. The definition of difficulty itself

can be divided into two: difficulty in coming up

with the algorithm to solve the given problem and

the difficulty in coding the solution. As such there

are questions where the solutions are easy and

straight forward, but may require lengthy and

tedious coding due to the nature of the question. On

the other hand, there are also questions that require

some thinking in finding the solutions, but once the

solution is found the coding may be short and

straight forward. Regardless of the difficulty level,all questions are given the same number of marks.

The rationale behind this is to ensure that students

give equal priority to all questions. Easier questions

should be answered to the best of their ability and

they should make sure that they get the full mark.

Even though the all the questions are given the

same mark, this does not jeopardize the judges from

recognizing the top teams since the more difficult

questions can only be solved a small number of

teams and those who solved the difficult questions

can easily solve the easier questions. After all,


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students who only like to solve difficult problems

and neglect the easier ones may not be good

candidates to be sent to external competitions.

Since the objective of the competition is to find

out the ability of the students to solve problems, it

is important that the questions are understandable

by students. Each question must be clearly

elaborated and the input and the output are clearlydefined. The lecturer who developed the question

were required to write a sample solution, to make

sure that the questions are really doable within the

allocated time and the difficulty level of the

question is as expected. A screenshot of the output

from the sample solution is also included with the

question. The screenshot is also carefully chosen so

that any special case or error checking required is

included in the screenshot. On top of that, each of

the questions developed are moderated by the other

members of the group. This is to make sure that the

question is not only understandable to the person

who developed the question, but also

understandable to other people reading the

question.

4. Judging Mechanism

The judging process was done in accordance

with the earlier setting of the questions. Involved in

judging were the same four judges who had set two

questions each. All judges were responsible to

judge the two questions that they had set, and for

which they had sample solutions available.

Contrary to the practice of marking examination

questions, no marks were given on the quality of

the code as such. Also, partial solutions if not

indicated as sub-tasks in the questions were not

evaluated. The sample screen output as indicated in

the question was considered as minimum

requirement for each submission. Only when that

sample output was produced by the executable

created by the respective judge from the submitted

source code, would the judge continue evaluating

the quality of the program. Then, the judges would

try another standard test case, one not given to the

participants, to evaluate the quality of the submitted

code further. For example, input validation could be

considered for additional marks up to the maximum

of 25 for each question.

It needs to be mentioned, that the judges did not

know the identity of the groups. The submissionswere projected to a screen in the judging room,

showing the question number and the group

number. Since any submission was final, the

respective judge could immediately start the

evaluation and marking immediately. Also, the

screen would show the time of submission. In case

of equal marks, the solution submitted earlier

would garner the advantage.

Once the time for the participants was up, and

the judgements of all judges as well their comments

were ready, the chief judge collected the marking

sheets as well as the comments given by the judges.

Then the chief judge added up the marks given by

the four judges for each group, witnessed by the

assistant. Then the chief judge repeated the count,

and read the numbers to the assistant, to detect

eventual ambiguities in the handwriting of the

judges. Finally, when agreement on the marks per

participating group was reached among chief judgeand assistant, the groups were sorted according to

the marks, and the corresponding departments and

teams of students retrieved.

Thereby any influence or affiliation of

competing teams and judges were excluded from

the judging process, and guaranteed that fairness in

judging prevailed.

The task of the judges was concluded during the

prize-giving ceremony, when the chief judge

summarized the comments submitted by his

colleagues, as added during the evaluation exercise.

5. Submission System

IPC Submission Websystem (IPCSW) was

developed using PHP, with a MySQL database. It

consists of 2 users admin and participant. On the

admin side, the admin creates the number of

groups of participant. Each group has a unique

groupname and random-generated password. They

will use it to log in into IPCSW. In IPCSW,

participants are allow to submit .c files only. They

can only submit each question once. Fig. 1 IPCSW

shows the submission time for each question, and in

the drop-down box, it will list out the question(s)

which has not been submitted yet.

Fig. 1: Interface for participants to submit the .c file

After submission, the file will be uploaded to the

folder located in the respective drive of the

webserver. The folder is shared, with read-permission for the judges. The judges, being

UNITEN lecturers, have their usernames and

passwords. When logging in to their PCs, the

judges can access the shared folders (see Fig.2).

Since the shared folders are read-only, the judges

have the permission to copy all the files. Then they

can compile and run the executable in their own

PCs. Then the judges can test the programs written

by the students with their pre-defined specific

inputs.


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Fig. 2: Shared folder inside the webserver

Admin also has an interface to view the

submission results and times for all groups

participating in IPC. This interface was projected in

the judging room, informed the judges whenever a

new file was submitted. Refer to Fig. 3.

Fig. 3: Interface for view all group submission

result

When the submission time was over, admin

needs to click a button to disallow further

submissions from the participants. The participants

than can neither submit any file, nor login anylonger.

6. Competition Results

The competition has resulted in at least two

positive aspects (aside from successfully organizing

it). Firstly, we have found some good teams of

students to send to future programming

competitions, in- and outside of UNITEN. We will

in future not have to decide ad hoc which studentsmight be qualified to represent the university.

Secondly, we have generated some motivation to

students of future courses to study not only for the

subject itself, but also for potentially rewarding

competitions.

Furthermore, our students understand the

differences between the learning and examination

process, with a grade as a result, and the more

success-oriented judging process in a competition;

on top of gaining experiences with open-book

examinations.

Last not least, a close look at the code

submitted, it is possible to identify specific topics

(SWAT-analysis), where are students are good at,

and which topics we could foster to improve the

overall performance of our programming students.

7. Conclusion

The iPC 08 competition was an effort to draw

programming interest within our students. We hope

that more students will tend to like, enjoy and put in

extra efforts in their programming courses. The

committee in charge has gone through several

processes in organizing the programming

competition. The competition approach,

competition content, judging mechanism, the

submission system and the competition results were

elaborated in detail in this paper. Apart from

elaborating the competition processes, this research

paper also includes the rational of conducting most

of the tasks involved.

We strongly believe that having a competition is

a valuable mechanism in attracting attention and

increasing the motivation level of students. We too

hope that our experiences in organizing iPC 08

will be a contribution to other IHLs in organizing

similar competitions.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to

University Tenaga Nasional for the support

provided to complete this paper.


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References

[1] ACM-ICPC International Collegiate Contest

Web Site. URL: http://cm2prod.baylor.edu/

[2] Du Boulay, "Some Difficulties Of Learning To

Program". In Studying The Novice Programmer,

Soloway, E., Sprohrer, J. (Eds.) Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, pp. 283-300, 1989.

[3] eGenting Programming Competition.

URL: http://egpc.genting.com.my/

[4] E. Roberts. Strategies for encouraging

individual achievement in introductory

computer science courses. In ACM SIGCSE

Bulletin, Proceedings of the thirty-first

SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science

education, March 2000.

[5] Holland, S. Griffiths, R. & Woodman, M.,

"Avoiding object misconceptions", Proceedings of

the 28th SIGCSE, 131-134, 1997.

[6] Milne, I. & Rowe, G., "Difficulties in Learning

and Teaching Programming - Views of Students

and Tutors", Education and Information

Technologies, 7:1, Kluwer Academic Publishers,

55-66, 2002.

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