Using intelligent tutors to enhance student learning of application programming interfaces

An essential part of software engineering training is for students to learn how to effectively use application programming interfaces (APIs), but traditional instruction only provides direct support for helping students to learn the most commonly used APIs. This paper introduces a new approach whereby professors could delegate some of these training responsibilities to intelligent tutors, which are interactive instructional materials that tailor themselves to each student's progress. A prototype system has been developed that semi-automatically generates API tutors from open source code freely available on the web. As API tutors are published to a new website, students have an increasingly large menu of training materials available for them to choose from. A preliminary study indicates that the approach increases student learning on sample tasks.