KOALA: a Configurable Tool for Collecting IDE Data When Solving Programming Tasks

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Karol, Daniil, Artser, Elizaveta, Vlasov, Ilya, Golubev, Yaroslav, Keuning, Hieke, Birillo, Anastasiia
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Karol, Daniil
Artser, Elizaveta
Vlasov, Ilya
Golubev, Yaroslav
Keuning, Hieke
Birillo, Anastasiia
author_facet Karol, Daniil
Artser, Elizaveta
Vlasov, Ilya
Golubev, Yaroslav
Keuning, Hieke
Birillo, Anastasiia
contents Collecting data of students solving programming tasks is incredibly valuable for researchers and educators. It allows verifying that the students correctly apply the features and concepts they are taught, or finding students' misconceptions. However, existing data collection tools have limitations, e.g., no control over the granularity of the collected code, not collecting the specific events of the programming environment used, and overall being hard to configure. To overcome these limitations, we propose KOALA, a convenient and highly configurable tool for collecting code snapshots and feature usage from students solving programming tasks in JetBrains IDEs. The plugin can be installed in IDEs and configured to provide the students with the necessary tasks, enable or disable certain IDE features like code completion, and run surveys. During problem solving, the plugin collects code snapshots at the configured granularity, all IDE actions like running and debugging, as well as some data not collected in prior works, like employed hotkeys and switching focus between files. The collected data is sent to the server that comes with the tool, where it is stored and can be converted to the standardized ProgSnap2 format. To showcase the tool, we collected data from 28 students solving tasks in two courses within the IDE, highlighting some insights from this data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_21266
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle KOALA: a Configurable Tool for Collecting IDE Data When Solving Programming Tasks
Karol, Daniil
Artser, Elizaveta
Vlasov, Ilya
Golubev, Yaroslav
Keuning, Hieke
Birillo, Anastasiia
Software Engineering
Computers and Society
Collecting data of students solving programming tasks is incredibly valuable for researchers and educators. It allows verifying that the students correctly apply the features and concepts they are taught, or finding students' misconceptions. However, existing data collection tools have limitations, e.g., no control over the granularity of the collected code, not collecting the specific events of the programming environment used, and overall being hard to configure. To overcome these limitations, we propose KOALA, a convenient and highly configurable tool for collecting code snapshots and feature usage from students solving programming tasks in JetBrains IDEs. The plugin can be installed in IDEs and configured to provide the students with the necessary tasks, enable or disable certain IDE features like code completion, and run surveys. During problem solving, the plugin collects code snapshots at the configured granularity, all IDE actions like running and debugging, as well as some data not collected in prior works, like employed hotkeys and switching focus between files. The collected data is sent to the server that comes with the tool, where it is stored and can be converted to the standardized ProgSnap2 format. To showcase the tool, we collected data from 28 students solving tasks in two courses within the IDE, highlighting some insights from this data.
title KOALA: a Configurable Tool for Collecting IDE Data When Solving Programming Tasks
topic Software Engineering
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21266