LGS-KT: Integrating logical and grammatical skills for effective programming knowledge tracing.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Educational Technology
• Artificial Intelligence

Background:

• Traditional knowledge tracing (KT) methods inadequately assess programming skills by often overlooking crucial behavioral data during the coding process.
• Existing approaches primarily rely on exercise outcomes, failing to capture the nuances of student programming development.
• There is a need for more comprehensive models that integrate diverse data sources to accurately measure programming proficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel Knowledge Tracing model, Logical and Grammar Skills Knowledge Tracing (LGS-KT), specifically designed for programming education.
• To enhance the assessment of students' programming skills by incorporating both logical and grammatical aspects.
• To improve the accuracy of predicting student outcomes in programming exercises.

Main Methods:

• Integrated static analysis and dynamic monitoring (CPU/memory usage) to evaluate code quality and student programming behavior.
• Developed a reweighted logical skill evolution graph by analyzing multiple student iterations on programming problems.
• Constructed a grammatical skills interaction graph based on knowledge concept similarity to model grammatical skill interactions.

Main Results:

• The LGS-KT model demonstrated superior performance in predicting student outcomes compared to existing methods.
• Significantly improved the accuracy of inferring students' programming grammatical skill states.
• The integrated approach provided a more thorough assessment of code quality and student development.

Conclusions:

• The LGS-KT model offers a more effective approach to assessing programming skills by integrating logical and grammatical dimensions.
• This research highlights the potential of advanced KT models in personalized programming education.
• The study provides open-source data and code to foster further research and innovation in educational technology for programming.