A Study of Grammar-concept Understanding Problem for Web Server-Side JavaScript Programming Learning

Soe Thandar Aung¹, May Zin Htun¹, Nobuo Funabiki¹, Yan Watequlis Syaifudin², Wen-Chung Kao³

1. ¹ Okayama University
2. ² Politeknik Negeri Malang
3. ³ National Taiwan Normal University

IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics - Taiwan (ICCE-Taiwan), 2023

JavaScript is a lightweight and interpreter-based programming language that has gained increasing popularity due to its importance in web application development. To support self-study for novice students, we have developed the JavaScript programming learning assistant system (JSPLAS). JSPLAS implemented the grammar-concept understanding problem (GUP), which serves as an introductory step for learning basic concepts and client-side development in JavaScript. However, it currently lacks coverage of server-side development, which is also crucial in web application development. In this paper, we propose an extension of the Grammar-Concept Understanding Problem (GUP) for web server-side JavaScript programming. A GUP instance consists of a source code and a set of questions that inquire about the definitions of key grammar concepts used in the code, where the answer is the keyword itself. We employ string matching technique to evaluate the accuracy of students’ answers. For evaluations, we generated 10 GUP instances by selecting 55 keywords and the corresponding questions for them, and assigned them to 41 students in Japan and Indonesia. Their solution results confirm the effectiveness of our proposal.

DOI10.1109/icce-taiwan58799.2023.10226945Copy