Improving the Learning Process of Students with the Use of Automated Feedback for Software Design in E-learning Environments

Abstract

In education feedback is generally regarded as crucial for improving knowledge and is a significant factor in motivating learning, but the process of providing timely and relevant feedback in software design studies can be challenging. In this paper, we aimed at implementing an automated feedback agent in a web-based UML class diagram editor for novice designers. In order to collect requirements and to provide a relevant feedback agent, students were interviewed. To gain further insight in the automated feedback agent we conducted an experiment and compared students that used the feedback agent with those that did not. Based on statistical analysis and a questionnaire we learned that i) students had experienced improvement in their learning process. ii) automated feedback has no statistically significant effect on students’ learning outcome. iii) automated feedback has a statistically significant effect on students task performance. The statistical result indicates that having a feedback agent does not necessarily improve students grades. On the other hand, our results from the interviews and questionnaire show that a feedback agent can play a significant role in improving the learning process and performance of students in software design. We suggest follow-up studies to investigate the results in larger educational contexts.