CodeWrite: supporting student-driven practice of java

Abstract

Drill and practice exercises enable students to master skills needed for more sophisticated programming. A barrier to providing such activities is the effort required to set up the programming environment. Testing is an important component to writing good software, but it is difficult to motivate students to write tests. In this paper we describe and evaluate CodeWrite, a web-based tool that provides drill and practice support for Java programming, and for which testing plays a central role in its use. We describe how we have used CodeWrite in a CS1 course, and demonstrate its effectiveness in providing good coverage of the language features presented in the course.