Interactive Learning Content for Introductory Computer Science Course Using the ViLLE Exercise Framework

Interactive learning content is a key to the success of online learning materials. Hence, many systems for creating and delivering interactive content has been developed in academia. In practice, however, teachers have to choose the suitable system from the multitude of available choices, thus limiting themselves to the features of that system. Furthermore, educational researchers have data collected in different formats by different systems. In this paper, we describe how we worked around these issues when implementing a new introductory computer science course using the ViLLE learning environment. The new course consists of six main topics, each of which is covered on a lecture and an online tutorial. The tutorials contain textual material together with numerous automatically assessed exercises with visual and immediate feedback. As we developed the course material, we integrated two educational systems - JSAV for algorithm simulation exercises and js-parsons for program construction tasks - into the ViLLE environment in order to use them on the course. This was enabled by the use of the framework for creating exercises into the ViLLE learning environment. The framework aims at easing the inclusion of interactive exercise into the environment by exercise system developers. In the paper, we briefly describe the course, the ViLLE exercise framework and out technical solution, as well as student results from the course and feedback on the exercise types.