Why Use WebToTeach?
WebToTeach is a system for giving homework exercises to students in programming
classes. If you are teaching any
course anywhere that involves teaching programming
in C, C++, Java, Pascal, Ada, or
Fortran you really should consider using WebToTeach for your students and yourself.
For The Students WebToTeach offers
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Web-access to exercises accessible from any browser, anywhere.
Doesn't require plugins, Java or Javascript.
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Immediate feedback. Students are immediately told whether their work
was acceptable or not no need to wait around for next thursday.
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The drill needed to master basic elements of programming.
A word about drill. "Drill"-- an educationally un-cool word. I've
had entire grant proposals to FIPSE shot down because of that one word. (Really!)
But drill or "repeated focused exercises" (sound better?) is essential, particularly
to beginning CS 1 students. These students, particularly the at-risk ones, get
overwhelmed in the face of standard programming assignments that require the integration
of many language features and programming concepts. WebToTeach offers these students
exercises that focus on one feature or one concept at a time because the student does NOT
have to write an entire program or module. By doing several of these prior to coming
to the closed lab or tackling the homework programming assignment, the student
is better prepared and more likely to be successful.
For The Faculty WebToTeach offers
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Web-access to system-- accessible from any browser, anywhere.
Doesn't require plugins, Java or Javascript.
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Automatic exercise checking you don't check the students answers
for correctness, WebToTeach does. You can still, however, can look
at their answers to evaluate style, comments, etc.
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Sharing. Faculty can share exercises that they create by importing
exercises from other courses or sections. If you a course has 10
sections and each instructor creates 4 exercises, for the work of
creating 4 you can assign 40 exercises to your students.
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The opportunity to construct small, focused micro-exercises to drill
the students in basic elements of programming. WebToTeach can also
be used to create large, involved multi-file exercises.
Interested? Send mail to arnow@acm.org,
or check out the
NSF-supported WebToTeach project page.
Back to the
WebToTeach Page.
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