Using Selective Syntactic Online Compiler to Promote Programming Learning

It is an important problem that let students do practices according to course objectives, but not take tricky shortcuts. For example, one can use build-in libraries to solve a sorting question and does not really understand the fundamental principles of the sorting algorithm. To avoid this kind of problems, our research team proposed the python-based Selective Syntactic Compiler (pySSC) to limit students can only apply permitted grammars. Also, we build an instant, interactive and online compiler for the pySSC usage. Teachers can use the pySSC platform to some specific syntax constraints and then students can use this platform to build codes as well as to get real-time feed-backs. Finally, our research team also executed a questionnaire-based survey to evaluate the performance of the pySSC in terms of three types of affordances, namely cognitive, perceived and functional affordances.