Helping students track learning progress using burn down charts

Agile software development methods, such as Scrum, have adopted the use of burn down charts to help track progress by development teams. We considered if this same technique could be applied to help students track their progress in programming units. Tools that help students visually track their progress may help address issues with time management, particularly in units that make use of frequent formative feedback. In this work we describe such a tool, named Doubtfire, and explain its use in helping students keep track of their progress across a number of undergraduate programming units.