Code-Review-as-an-Educational-Service: A tool for Java code review in programming education

IF 2.4 4区计算机科学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

SoftwareX Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI:10.1016/j.softx.2025.102048

Matthew Beattie, Moira Watson, Desmond Greer, Bee-Yen Toh, Zheng Li

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

High-quality source code is the foundation of successful and sustainable software development, while code review plays a crucial role in ensuring code quality. We place a special emphasis on the educational application of code review, aiming to assist novice students who are entry-level programmers establish industry-standard programming practices while reducing the likelihood of vulnerabilities and technical debt. Given that existing code review tools often require complex setups and are designed for large-scale, enterprise-level software projects, we advocate for the development of an easy-to-use, zero-configuration, and lightweight tool that is specifically tailored to the needs of educational environments. This paper reports our development of such a cloud-native code review tool as an educational service. Although still at the proof-of-concept stage, our internal and preliminary assessment has confirmed the promising usability and usefulness of this tool both for students (e.g., self-reviewing an individual exercise) and for educators (e.g., examining cohort exercises and prioritising teaching materials). By integrating this tool into our innovative project Automating Programming Education in Java, we believe that such an educational service would be able to make contributions to faster maturation of programming skills in students.

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来源期刊

SoftwareX COMPUTER SCIENCE, SOFTWARE ENGINEERING-

CiteScore

5.50

自引率

2.90%

发文量

184

审稿时长

9 weeks

期刊介绍： SoftwareX aims to acknowledge the impact of software on today''s research practice, and on new scientific discoveries in almost all research domains. SoftwareX also aims to stress the importance of the software developers who are, in part, responsible for this impact. To this end, SoftwareX aims to support publication of research software in such a way that: The software is given a stamp of scientific relevance, and provided with a peer-reviewed recognition of scientific impact; The software developers are given the credits they deserve; The software is citable, allowing traditional metrics of scientific excellence to apply; The academic career paths of software developers are supported rather than hindered; The software is publicly available for inspection, validation, and re-use. Above all, SoftwareX aims to inform researchers about software applications, tools and libraries with a (proven) potential to impact the process of scientific discovery in various domains. The journal is multidisciplinary and accepts submissions from within and across subject domains such as those represented within the broad thematic areas below: Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Environmental Sciences; Medical and Biological Sciences; Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Originating from these broad thematic areas, the journal also welcomes submissions of software that works in cross cutting thematic areas, such as citizen science, cybersecurity, digital economy, energy, global resource stewardship, health and wellbeing, etcetera. SoftwareX specifically aims to accept submissions representing domain-independent software that may impact more than one research domain.