From WebEx to NavEx: Interactive Access to Annotated Program Examples

This paper reviews our work on providing students interactive access to annotated program examples. We review our experience with WebEx, the system that allows students to explore examples line by line. After that we present NavEx, an adaptive environment for accessing interactive programming examples. NavEx enhances WebEx with a specific kind of adaptive navigation support known as adaptive annotation. The classroom study of NavEx discovered that adaptive navigation support can visibly increase student motivation to work with nonmandatory educational content. NavEx boosted the overall amount of work done and the average length of a session. In addition, various features of NavEx were highly regarded by the students.