Giving Automated Feedback About Student Code Identifiers: a Method Based on the Description of Programming Problem

• Marcos Nascimento Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG)
• Eliane Araújo Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG)
• Dalton Serey Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG)
• Jorge Figueiredo Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/cbie.sbie.2019.537

Resumo

Providing timely feedback on identifier naming to novice programmers can help them to improve their program readability. However, due to the growth in the number of students learning to program nowadays, giving manual feedback on identifier quality becomes prohibitive. In this paper, we propose a method to automatically give this feedback which is correct 75.0% of the time in contrast to the instructors' assessment. We found that 51.7% of the students who received automated feedback showed their program identifier quality improvement by picking better names. It means that we can help students to improve identifier naming and consequently, their program readability from early coding experiences.

Palavras-chave: Automated Feedback, Code Identifiers, Program Readability, Programming

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