K.E.M.Cs: A set of student's characteristics for modeling in adaptive programming tutoring systems

In this paper a set of student's characteristics that have to be considered in an adaptive and/or personalized programming tutoring system is presented. This set is called K.E.M.Cs and includes: knowledge, errors, motivation and cognitive states. It allows the system to identify the variety of backgrounds of prospective learners of programming, their misconceptions, needs and learning pace. The modeling of K.E.M.C.s is performed through a combination of different student modeling techniques: overlay, stereotypes, fuzzy logic and OCC cognitive theory. The gain of this approach is that the particular student model represents a sufficiently large part of the complex dimensions of a real student of programming. Therefore, it can be the base for the improvement of the quality of the learning process.