This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. EIA-0082393.
Authors: Timothy J. Hickey, Richard Alterman, and John Langton
Department of Computer Science
Brandeis University 
Waltham, MA 02254
USA

In our poster we present the TA-Tool, a same time/different place
groupware application developed to support the use of online teaching
assistants in large introductory programming courses. It combines the
features of a text editor, ftp client, and Instant Messenger client to
allow students and teaching assistants to inspect and comment on the
student's code in real time.

As our programming classes grow in size, the problem of providing
effective Teaching Assistant (TA) support becomes more difficult. With an
increased number of students comes an increased number of schedule
variances making it hard to coordinate TA meeting times.  Students also no
longer work in a central location where a TA can hold office hours.  

At the same time, developments in techonology have made online student/TA
interaction more feasible as an alternative to face to face meetings.  
High speed internet connections and student familiarity with interacting
online (via popular programs like Instant Messenger) lessen the overhead
of introducing such technology into the classroom.

The ``TA-tool'' is a software application which aims to improve TA support
given these trends. The main components of the tool are a TA/student chat
area, a "buddy list" for identifying other students and available Tas, and
three text editing areas.  The first text area contains the student's
program, the second is for the students to write comments in (this allows
them to reference and comment outside of the code), and the third is for
TA comments.  These 3 windows scroll vertically together, so that the TA's
and student's comments remain together with the corresponding lines of the
student's program. The tool uses a light color to highlight the line
containing the most recent change, and uses a darker color for the
previous 100 characters. This highlighting allows the student and TA to
each see where the other is working. The remote text areas are also
read-only, thus the TA cannot directly change the student's program but
only comment on it, line-by-line. Besides being easier to implement this
serves an important pedagogic goal of reinforcing the TA's role as
advisor, not partner in coding.  There are also a number of IDE
(Integrated Development Environment) tools for scheme programs (which was
the main application area), and some other features such as a Font menu, a
Help menu, and a File menu (which allows students to store code either
locally or on the class server).

The TA-Tool logs every event and the time (in milliseconds) at which it
occurred. The log data collected from TA/student interactions can be
reviewed using a VCR-like tool with the usual VCR controls (play, forward,
reverse, fast forward, pause). This has proved to be quite useful in
assessing students' problems and allows TAs to review what students have
been working on.

The tool has shown much promise in its first deployment in 2 small summer
courses and is currently being used in classes with up to 200 students.  
Its design continues to evolve as student use elucidates issues in
human/computer interaction and online interaction.  The trends of
technology and its effects on sociology in the modern learning environment
makes the TA-Tool and applications like it more and more useful in the
classroom.