Continuous Competition---A Competition Framework Extending Continuous Integration for Competitive PBL---

Abstract

One effective programming education approach is to involve competitive factors in project-based learning (PBL). For competitive PBL to be effective, students must be self-motivated, and teachers must monitor students' progress in development. This paper proposes a competitive PBL support framework called continuous competition (CC) based on the concept of continuous integration (CI), a software development practice. In traditional CI, program modification (i.e., commit) triggers automatic build and test to achieve small and rapid development iterations. Our propsosed CC conducts a competition of students' products in addition to build and test when students change their program. As a case study, we introduced CC into an actual competitive PBL course held at Osaka University. We observed a certain contribution to improving students' motivation in development and helping teachers monitor students' progress.