A Proposal of Adaptive Learning System for Object-Oriented Programming Education

This paper presents an Adaptive Learning (AL) system for teaching Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). The OOP paradigm is one of the foundations for introductory programming education, being one of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Computing Curricula's Programming Languages Fundamentals. However, studies show that students have difficulty associating abstract concepts with real-world analogies. When trying to solve a problem, the difficulty in understanding and applying concepts can hinder using the paradigm. Therefore, it is necessary to create alternatives to assist in teaching Object-Oriented Programming. One solution is to use Adaptive Learning, which aims to adjust the knowledge acquisition process according to the student. Learning Objects (LO), which can be games, quizzes, interactive experiences, videos, and images, among others, can be used to support this method. Thus, this work aims to present a proposal for an approach to teaching OOP using Adaptive Learning. The approach consists of a support system for OOP students, which will support their teaching with a Learning Object recommendation mechanism that is more relevant to the student's learning style. To this end, agents will be used to control the selection of LOs and adjust the profiles. The student's actions will be collected and used as a basis for the recommendation. From the data obtained, constant adjustments will be made to the recommendation of LOs and the student's profile, thus providing more suitable content for their learning. As a result of this study, a functional prototype of the recommendation method was developed in a mobile application. The use of this application will be evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively to validate the solution. After using the application, the evaluation results will provide us with information about the users' perception of the proposal, its recommendation accuracy, and usability. With this, we can build a version that will be used in the classroom and contribute to the student's OOP learning process.