Facilitating students' collaboration and learning in a question and answer system

Abstract

Green Dolphin (GD) is a question and answer system for students learning programming, with a social web interface. It crowd-sources the task of answering technical questions to the peers of students who ask questions. GD has several original features that make it different from existing systems. It automatically identifies students who are knowledgeable based on their activity, and tags them as experts to whom other students can ask questions. GD provides students with automatic feedback of the quality of code they submit. Thus, students get fast and high quality answers from their peers and the system, freeing up time for teachers. After a student posts a question in GD, it delays making visible answers from instructors and teaching assistants so that other students are encouraged to participate, and have time to answer the question. We believe that this can significantly increase student participation, collaboration and sense of ownership. Students gain new knowledge from the flow of questions and answers in the system. They develop communication skills by asking and answering questions as well as programming and debugging skills.