As with the Matlab and Java versions of this, I'm working on creating a set of C language exercises that can be assigned to students in an automated way, like on eClass (Moodle) using Virtual Programming Lab or the "lab test mode" that we use in the EECS department at York University. Here, I'm focusing […]
The assessment of student learning in the formative stage of a university programming class has become very challenging for a number of reasons: the pandemic has generally disrupted learning processes at the elementary and high school levels Prior to the pandemic, reading and note-taking habits had changed, possibly making them less effective. IDE-specific tools catch […]
Here I'm going to outline an exercise in Matlab that combines the following features: A text file with four variants of the question Random selection of the variant Visual component in the form of an ASCII-art equation, like this: 2 ⋅ s + 4 ⋅ t a = ───────────── s + t The objective is […]
Heard about Virtual Programming Lab (VPL) and eClass at York and want to "kick the tires" a little? If you haven't already, VPL is a plugin for Moodle (eClass at YorkU) that allows instructors to create interactive programming activities for students. Here is some introductory material. [this may need an update after the update in […]
It's important to have dynamic 24/7 interactive activities for programming classes. There are plenty of solutions out there, including Matlab Grader and Möbius. The folks at Jetbrains have their Academy system, too. What I need, at this stage, is a no bells-and-whistles, auto-grader for Matlab code that can run a unit test on a student's […]
The SIMAVR package is for simulating AVR processors like the ATMEGA328 on the Arduino UNO. I'm looking to try to use it with VPL in courses like our computer architecture class, EECS 2021, as a way of simulating the UNO's processor in exercises involving assembler and C programming. On a Mac, we use HomeBrew. The […]
Unit testing is really important in general programming, but it's also really useful when creating interactive programming assignments. With Java, I like to use JUnit and with C I like to use the Unity unit tester. With Verilog it's actually really straight-forward to set up testing frameworks. In the EECS 2021 (Computer Organization) labs written […]
The Teaching in Focus (TiF) conference at York was held online in 2021 due to the pandemic. Here's a list of the abstracts. My "Welcome to my Classroom" talk was based on the work I did in EECS 1011, 1021 and 2021: Giving students rapid and accurate feedback is vital. We can do so with […]
Introduction Microchip's MPLAB X permits simulation from the command line. This is interesting from the perspective of teaching if we have automatically-graded programming assignments that take the student's program and runs it against a simulated chip in an LMS like Moodle. Background I'm interested in how we can use the MDB in MPLAB X to […]
Virtual Programming Lab is a plugin for Moodle (eClass at YorkU) that permits interactive programming assignments to be made for students. There are some really good examples at Smith College on how to set it up with Python and a few with Java and C. I've posted, on YouTube, an example of how to […]