Programming is one of the basic skills that students must acquire. However, learning to program is not an easy task. Also teaching programming is an arduous but challenging task, requiring close follow-up and constant and meaningful feedback. So the main question is: how can we help teachers and students to achieve these goals? We identified a tool that can be useful to this purpose. That is Virtual Programming Lab (VPL), a Moodle plugin that allows students to submit their code and get prompt feedback without the teacher's intervention. In order to test this concept, an experiment was performed with several classes of beginner programming students, in two editions of Algorithms and Programming course unit of the degree in Informatics Engineering lectured at the Informatics Engineering Department at the School of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Porto. The students were challenged to test their assignments in VPL with a set of test values previously defined by the teachers. After the experiments, we used surveys to gather the involved students' and teachers' opinion, and more than 70% of the students answered that they considered the VPL an added value for the teaching–learning process. The dynamics verified in the classes, the general opinion of the teachers, and the acceptance and participation of the students allow to classify the experience as positive.

中文翻译：

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使用虚拟编程实验室改善学习编程：算法和编程的案例

编程是学生必须掌握的基本技能之一。但是，学习编程并不是一件容易的事。教授编程也是一项艰巨而艰巨的任务，需要密切的跟进和持续而有意义的反馈。因此，主要问题是：我们如何帮助教师和学生实现这些目标？我们确定了可用于此目的的工具。那就是Virtual Programming Lab（VPL），这是一个Moodle插件，允许学生提交代码并获得及时反馈，而无需老师干预。为了测试这一概念，我们在工程学院信息工程系教授了两个版本的信息工程学算法和程序设计课程单元中，对几类初学者进行了实验，波尔图理工学院。要求学生使用教师预先定义的一组测试值在VPL中测试他们的作业。实验结束后，我们通过调查收集了学生和老师的意见，超过70％的学生回答说他们认为VPL是教学过程中的附加值。在课堂上验证的动力，教师的普遍观点以及学生的接受和参与可以将体验归类为积极的。超过70％的学生回答说，他们认为VPL是教学过程的附加值。在课堂上验证的动力，教师的普遍观点以及学生的接受和参与可以将体验归类为积极的。超过70％的学生回答说，他们认为VPL是教学过程的附加值。在课堂上验证的动力，教师的普遍观点以及学生的接受和参与可以将体验归类为积极的。