Using BlueJ as a Research Tool

A free one-day workshop preceding ICER 2006, exploring the use of BlueJ to gather data on student programming performance. Attendance is free, but please register by emailing Jenny Oatley.

Amongst others, this day should interest

CS education researchers
pedagogic software developers
teachers interested in the programming behaviours of the students in their class

Draft Programme

10.00-11.00	The BlueJ Extensions framework and API (Ian Utting)
11.30-12.30	Writing extensions: case studies of existing work Novice compilation behaviours (Matt Jadud) Roles of variables (Colin Johnson)
14.00-14.15	Some data logging capabilities of other IDEs (Cecilla Vargas)
14.15-15.00	Plenary discussion: What questions can we ask with this new capability? What are appropriate sorts of questions? "These are the questions I want to ask - can it be done?"
15.30-17.00	Presentation of joint research project. This will comprise a new BlueJ project packaged with a data-gathering extension. Anyone running BlueJ can set the project for their students (it is designed to be completed within a single two-hour lab session) and submit the resulting data. Anyone who submits data will have access to the entire data corpus, so may compare the behaviour of their students against others, or undertake aggregate analyses. The project must be set in the 2006 academic year and we expect to report results at ICER 2007.