Ofer Wald, Judith Gal-Ezer, Nezer Zaidenberg E103 The main technical challenges security, sandboxing, and execution timing, are beyond the scope of this paper. Our focus here is on the pedagogical affordances of the system: structured problem sets, automated checking, and immediate feedback. CS1 – Introduction to Computer Science The system was used in a first semester CS1 course taught in C at a public science-and-technology oriented institution. The course enrolled 555 students across seven classes, taught by six instructors. Student backgrounds varied considerably, particularly between daytime and evening classes . This semester was exceptional due to external circumstances: the semester started two months late, was shortened by four weeks, and included no mandatory assignments. As a result, the original plan to use the site for required coursework was not fully implemented. Some instructors were reluctant to adopt a new pedagogy under these conditions, and concerns were raised about problem difficulty. Nevertheless, the first author, who taught one of the classes, encouraged all students to use the site and was more persistent with students in their own group. Problems were released in alignment with course progress, and students could view peer solutions after submitting correct ones. A small bonus (3-5 points) was promised for site participation, though this bonus was excluded from all analyses. Grades were determined solely by a final exam, with results summarized in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1. Student results – first exam sitting Class Number #Students Fail % Average grade Median grade STD DEV 1 76 35.5 65.7 71 29.0 2 85 34.1 68.4 75 27.8 3 75 20 74.7 80 27.6 4 88 25 70.8 77.5 27.5 5 53 28.3 70.6 80 28 6 66 16.7 75.5 86 27.4 7 59 33.9 64.3 70 27.8 total 502 27.7 70 77 27.9 Table 2. Student results – second exam sitting Class Number #Students Fail % Average grade Median grade STD DEV 1 44 52.3 52.5 46.5 27.4 2 44 52.3 56.9 54 27.6 3 36 38.9 57.8 68.5 32.5 4 42 33.3 64.0 70.5 25.7 5 21 61.9 52.2 40 30.1 6 28 39.3 57.9 60 30.8 7 38 47.4 53.4 60 23.7 total 253 45.8 56.6 60 28
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