Code Analyser in CSTutor - a C# Intelligent Tutoring System

Abstract

This paper describes the process that is performed by CSTutor to analyse each student program. CSTutor is an Intelligent Tutoring System that supports the student’s learning by doing. Built as an integrated part of Visual Studio 2010 or 2012, CSTutor can give assistance to a student writing programs in Visual Studio from the earliest stage. The analysis process starts by capturing the student’s program from the Visual Studio Editor. The program is then parsed and simplified into facts in a knowledge base. This knowledge base also contains rules, actions, constraints, and a goal to be achieved. The goal can be decomposed into several sub-goals to give a finer detail of feedback to the student. So that it can be used as a practical supplement to classroom instruction, CSTutor provides a number of exercises that can be tried by the students. Further, the number of exercises can be increased without having to change CSTutor’s program code. The teacher just needs to add the description of the exercise, the constraints, and the goal that should be achieved in the new exercise. The evaluation of CSTutor is in progress and it is expected that CSTutor will help students learn programming to an improved degree.