A problem generator to learn expression: evaluation in CSI, and its effectiveness

Introductory Computer Science students often do not clearly understand the concepts of operator precedence and associativity, and make mistakes when they write and evaluate expressions. In order to help them learn these concepts by solving problems, we have developed an applet that generates problems (henceforth called problet) and corrects the learner's answers. In this paper, we will describe the design and implementation of this problet. We conducted a controlled experiment to assess the effectiveness of using the problet. Results indicate that using the problet improved learning by 18%. We will describe our experiment and present its results.

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