Pulla tracks detailed student code solving steps for better teaching
Pulla: A Parsons Problem Tool for Fine-Grained Behavioral Tracing and Instructor-Facing Problem-Solving Analysis
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Many existing tools only show whether a student solved a coding puzzle, not how they solved it. The authors built Pulla, a tool that watches each step students take while arranging code pieces. This helps teachers see where students get stuck or confused, like mixing up exception types or control flow. They tested this tool in two university programming courses and found common problem areas for students. This information can help teachers give better, targeted help.
What this means in practice
- •For learning management system developers: Integrate detailed student interaction capture to highlight common programming misunderstandings in coding assignments.
- •For educational software engineers: Build instructor dashboards that visualize fine-grained step data to guide targeted programming course interventions.
Authors
Daniel Prol, Juho Leinonen, Arto Hellas, Saleh Alkhamees, Amin Alipour
Abstract
Existing Parsons problem tools primarily focus on correctness, indicating whether a student solved a problem, but providing limited visibility into the underlying problem-solving process. We address this gap by introducing Pulla, a Parsons problem tool that instruments programming assignments to capture fine-grained interaction data. These behavioral traces allow the system to surface recurring difficulty patterns, giving instructors actionable insights to inform targeted intervention decisions. This paper describes our experience in developing and deploying Pulla. We deployed the tool in two university courses: an upper-division software design course at the University of Houston (United States) and an introductory programming course at Aalto University (Finland). By analyzing the data collected, we identified common difficulty patterns, including misidentifying exception types, confusing return with the throw/raise mechanism, and incorrect control-flow ordering.