A tutor for counter-controlled loop concepts and its evaluation

We have developed a Web-based tutor for teaching and testing counter-controlled loop concepts in C++. The tutor is designed to promote problem-based learning. It repeatedly generates problems, grades user's answers and provides feedback about the correct answers. This paper describes the design of the tutor, outlines a test that we used to evaluate its effectiveness, and presents the results of die test. The test confirmed our hypothesis that using the tutor helps improve student learning. The improvement is statistically significant. This tutor can be used for practice or testing in Computer Science I.