A Framework for Generating Diverse Haskell-IO Exercise Tasks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a Haskell-based framework that automatically generates diverse I/O programming exercises, saving educators time and enabling personalized student practice with minimal manual effort.

Contribution

It presents a novel EDSL framework in Haskell for automatic, customizable generation of I/O programming tasks based on a specification language.

Findings

Enables automatic creation of varied programming exercises

Reduces manual effort for educators

Supports personalized student practice

Abstract

We present the design of a framework to automatically generate a large range of different exercise tasks on Haskell-I/O programming. Automatic task generation is useful in many different ways. Manual task creating is a time consuming process, so automating it saves valuable time for the educator. Together with an automated assessment system automatic task generation allows students to practice with as many exercise tasks as needed. Additionally, each student can be given a slightly different version of a task, reducing issues regarding plagiarism that arise naturally in an e-learning environment. Our task generation is centered around a specification language for I/O behavior that we developed in an earlier work. The task generation framework, an EDSL in Haskell, provides powerful primitives for the creation of various artifacts, including program code, from specifications. We will not go into detail on the technical realization of these primitives. This article instead showcases how such artifacts and the framework as a whole can be used to build exercise tasks templates that can then be (randomly) instantiated.