More than one third of computer science students either switch disciplines or fail the first programming class due to test/performance anxiety or learning difficulties. Personalized feedback can potentially improve both learning outcomes and retention for novice learners of computer programming. Online learning management and assessment systems have the power to allow self-paced, individualized and multi-layered learning that can be easily combined with time tested learning strategies such as pair programming, game based learning or visual programming to positively impact learning outcomes and support free-choice learning. In this paper, we introduce an online automated tutoring and assessment system, called MindReader, for introductory programming in C++. We discuss how MindReader generates personalized feedback fully automatically and prioritizes semantic error messages to avoid overwhelming the learner with a large number of signs of “failures.” We also discuss how MindReader can be used as a flexible teaching tool for introductory programming classes, and how its smart tutoring and assessment systems can improve learning.

Programming or querying usually presupposes some degree of technical familiarity with the syntax of a language and the peculiarity of the objects it manipulates to produce useful information. The degree of abstractions supported in a language helps lessen the depth of such familiarity needed, and aids in improving access to and usability of these resources. To help biologists concentrate more on their science questions and not on how to compute it, several successful workflow orchestration languages and systems have been proposed. Despite their popularity, significant limitations reduce their usability and limit applicability in novel applications. In this paper, we present a visual language, called VisFlow, for workflow orchestration using heterogeneous and distributed resources. We advance the idea that once resources are minimally described and abstracted, arbitrary workflows can be designed solely using query primitives supported in VisFlow. Its capabilities can be augmented by including computational artifacts in the form of library functions written in R, Python, and Java, or even in SQL and XQuery, making it a truly extensible system. We discuss its salient features and illustrate its capabilities using a substantial set of examples.

The adoption and availability of diverse application design and support platforms are making generic scientific application orchestration increasingly difficult. In such an evolving environment, higher level abstractions of design primitives are critically important using which end users have a chance to craft their own applications without a complete technical grasp of the lower level details. In this research, we introduce a novel scientific workflow design platform that supports high level tools for data integration, process description and analytics based on a visual language for naive users and advanced options for computing savvy programmers in one single platform, called VisFlow. We describe its salient features and advantages using a complex scientific application in natural resources and ecology. Video: https://youtu.be/ 2YSYVyOuuk.

Data integration continues to baffle researchers even though substantial progress has been made. Although the emergence of technologies such as XML, web services, semantic web and cloud computing have helped, a system in which biologists are comfortable articulating new applications and developing them without technical assistance from a computing expert is yet to be realized. The distance between a friendly graphical interface that does little, and a “traditional” system though clunky yet powerful, is deemed too great more often than not. The question that remains unanswered is, if a user can state her query involving a set of complex, heterogeneous and distributed life sciences resources in an easy to use language and execute it without further help from a computer savvy programmer. In this paper, we present a declarative meta-language, called VisFlow, for requirement specification, and a translator for mapping requirements into executable queries in a variant of SQL augmented with integration artifacts.