Monitoring system of student situation in introductory C programming exercise with a contest style

To improve introductory C language lesson for computer engineering education in college, we have proposed a small contest style exercise for beginners in classroom. We have also developed tProgrEss, the contest management Web server. The server judges the uploaded program by execution test with input and output data. To adjust a contest for beginners, we offer several preparation tests, which are for step-by-step sub-goals as partial specification. And we set the rule of partial points and plus or minus points based on time. The system shows the result of judgment and exhibits the ranking page immediately. We are realizing a teacher support sub-system, which consists of monitoring and tutoring functions. First, we developed Web page for monitoring a classroom, each student and problems, which include time-series view and graph. They help for a teacher to advise students which work not so well, and to detect mistakes which many students make. We carried out a classroom type contest as a practical experiment. We confirmed the educational effects by frequent and early submission through execution test series and time points. We got some ideas for improvement of usability by user evaluation of a teacher.