Auto-grader Feedback Utilization and Its Impacts: An Observational Study Across Five Community Colleges

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Zhang, Adam, Burte, Heather, Savelka, Jaromir, Bogart, Christopher, Sakr, Majd
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Zhang, Adam
Burte, Heather
Savelka, Jaromir
Bogart, Christopher
Sakr, Majd
author_facet Zhang, Adam
Burte, Heather
Savelka, Jaromir
Bogart, Christopher
Sakr, Majd
contents Automated grading systems, or auto-graders, have become ubiquitous in programming education, and the way they generate feedback has become increasingly automated as well. However, there is insufficient evidence regarding auto-grader feedback's effectiveness in improving student learning outcomes, in a way that differentiates students who utilized the feedback and students who did not. In this study, we fill this critical gap. Specifically, we analyze students' interactions with auto-graders in an introductory Python programming course, offered at five community colleges in the United States. Our results show that students checking the feedback more frequently tend to get higher scores from their programming assignments overall. Our results also show that a submission that follows a student checking the feedback tends to receive a higher score than a submission that follows a student ignoring the feedback. Our results provide evidence on auto-grader feedback's effectiveness, encourage their increased utilization, and call for future work to continue their evaluation in this age of automation
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_14235
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Auto-grader Feedback Utilization and Its Impacts: An Observational Study Across Five Community Colleges
Zhang, Adam
Burte, Heather
Savelka, Jaromir
Bogart, Christopher
Sakr, Majd
Computers and Society
Automated grading systems, or auto-graders, have become ubiquitous in programming education, and the way they generate feedback has become increasingly automated as well. However, there is insufficient evidence regarding auto-grader feedback's effectiveness in improving student learning outcomes, in a way that differentiates students who utilized the feedback and students who did not. In this study, we fill this critical gap. Specifically, we analyze students' interactions with auto-graders in an introductory Python programming course, offered at five community colleges in the United States. Our results show that students checking the feedback more frequently tend to get higher scores from their programming assignments overall. Our results also show that a submission that follows a student checking the feedback tends to receive a higher score than a submission that follows a student ignoring the feedback. Our results provide evidence on auto-grader feedback's effectiveness, encourage their increased utilization, and call for future work to continue their evaluation in this age of automation
title Auto-grader Feedback Utilization and Its Impacts: An Observational Study Across Five Community Colleges
topic Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14235